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by VintageVulpes



Series: When Two Stars Collide [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Cassian doesn't smile, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jyn wants a home, Kinda, Mission Fic, Sex, Slice of Life, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, angst with happy ending, mentions of blood but nothing gory, slowburn, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:33:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22807909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VintageVulpes/pseuds/VintageVulpes
Summary: Jyn never had a home that lasted; people left and places were abandoned, still, she longed for a family and a place to belong. When she was volun-told into the rebellion, surprisingly, she found what she was looking for in a handful of people. Now she was down to one and the war was not over yet. With missions left to complete, death lurking nearby always, Jyn struggles to find the proper balance between desire and duty and tries to find a way to convince herself that good things do happen....Cassian and Jyn navigate their blossoming relationship while handling the stresses of finishing what they started. A collection of moments throughout the original trilogy of what happens behind the scenes of the Leia, Han, and Luke story.
Relationships: Cassian Andor & Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Series: When Two Stars Collide [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650613
Comments: 49
Kudos: 115





	1. Yavin IV

The ship’s rumble and hissing as the door released behind them was drowned out by the roar of the incoming ocean and earth racing towards them. They were holding hands, looking at the horizon, when gloved hands settled on Cassian and her shoulder simultaneously, sand kicked up between them at the sudden stop of the soldier yelling at them to get up. To hurry. 

Jyn looked at the soldier with owlish eyes, blinked once, twice, before her mind finally caught up with what was being presented to her. To them. She looked to Cassian before he looked to her and she yanked at his hand, still held in hers, and pulled it around her neck; lifted with every last ounce of energy she had left. Cassian grunted and she winced in empathy as well as from the jolt of pain that shot up her left leg at the effort. The rebel soldier was still yelling, she could see his lips moving, mouth wide and eyes round as he looked over his shoulder at the horizon that was coming closer, rising like a wall. 

He went to the other side of Cassian, wrapping the wounded man’s left arm around his shoulders to help Jyn carry his weight. 

“We’re almost there,” she managed, but whether the assurance was for Cassian or herself, she could not and would never be sure. Her left arm was wrapped around his back, her hand squeezed his side as a chill ran up her spine; anticipating the heat, a powerful blow of from behind, but she did not dare look back. Instead, she stared at the open ship, another soldier waited for them, waving his arm in a wide circular motion, beckoning them closer, shouting at them to hurry, she supposed. Her blood rushed like an ocean in her ears, louder than the soldier. Still, she could hear the labored breaths of Cassian, grunting through the pain, she was tuned into it. To him.

Shock, they would tell her later, but she would deny it. 

They got onto the ship, the soldier who had been waiting disappeared by the time they did. Cassian nearly dropped to the metal floor the moment they were passed the hinge of the ramp, his legs buckling under him while the grunts of effort from before turned into one, anguished groan. She and the other soldier managed to drag him over to one of the seats along the wall. It would be a bumpy ride to escape, if their experience on Jedha had taught them anything, but they still had to get passed the imperial ships, a blockade waiting just outside the planet’s atmosphere. 

“Go,” Jyn insisted, barely looking at the other soldier, knowing that he likely had a job to do if they were to get out and she could at least take care of Cassian, who had leaned his head back and closed his eyes. She barely noticed that the soldier went back to close the ramp before he ran to the cockpit to help pilot because she was so focused on the frown, ever etched in Cassian's features had become deeper than she had ever seen it. His eyebrows were brought together tightly, a wince tightening the skin around his eyes, and his skin was damp; beads of sweat speckling his forehead and plastering his dark hair to his brow. Her own lips turned downward, her chin wrinkling briefly as her hands went to the lap belt at either of Cassian’s sides. 

His hands moved to intercept, startling her for a moment because she hadn't noticed he had opened his eyes again. 

“I got it,” he grumbled but, while his hands trembled as he tried to take the ends of the buckle, her grip was stronger and her hands deft. In a moment’s time she uncurled the left belt and slid the metal piece into the pocket; securing him in his seat. He watched her sit down beside him and fasten her own seatbelt before she turned her head to meet his gaze. Jyn’s breathing hitched for a moment, her chest shuddering, before she reached for his left hand with her right and held their combined fist on the seat between their thighs, their fingers intertwined as she looked away from him and stared ahead at the gray, durasteel wall. 

The ship listed from one side to the other, occasionally it jolted from a direct hit from, what she figured was, bolts from the imperial ships but the shields held strong. The hum of the drive vibrated under their feet, the curses from the cockpit drifted to where they sat, and their own heavy breathing from exertion all combined into white noise and Jyn could not think straight. Could not comprehend how they were here in the first place, how had they been found and yanked from death’s cold grip to be sitting together now. She wondered how many others had also made it.

Jyn didn’t dare to hope. She wouldn’t survive the disappointment. 

When they hit hyperspace, a weight lifted off Jyn’s chest that she hadn’t realized had been there and she looked to Cassian, who had a dark look in his eyes. A faraway one that she had seen before on others. A gaze she knew meant that it could be their last. 

Immediately, she released his hand and unbuckled, ripping the belt away from her lap with both arms, and rushed to kneel in front of him, between his knees, and lifted her chin to meet his gaze with her wide, worried one. “Look at me.” 

He swallowed but it looked like it took more effort than it should and she winced; her upper lip lifting without separating from her lower one, while the corners of her mouth tugged down into a deep frown. Still, he blinked and focused on her. 

“Don’t leave me now,” she implored, her chin wrinkled with emotion. 

Cassian lifted his left hand and pressed his thumb to her chin, his index finger crooked and pressed under her chin, only for a moment, before he dropped his hand back into his lap and sighed. A subtle nod of his head was the only indication that he heard her, acknowledged her, but there would be no false hope. No empty promises. Perhaps she would appreciate that if she didn’t long to hear him say: _I’m not going anywhere_ so badly. 

The trip back to Yavin 4 was excruciatingly lengthy. At some point one of the five soldiers that had come back for them and picked them up returned to them and provided them with water and the news that the transmission had been received. The mission was a success. Yet it felt wrong to smile. Worse yet was when Cassian closed his eyes and did not wake back up right away. Jyn worked hard for the hours it took to return to base to keep Cassian awake, unsure if he had a concussion from when he landed on the platform on top of whatever other injuries to his spine and internal organs there were. 

She asked him questions, tried to keep him talking, the man of so little words. It made something within her flutter to see he was trying so hard for her sake, because she asked him to -- because it was important. 

By the time the door opened again, the light blinding and searing into her skull, exacerbating a migraine she did not realize she was getting until then, Cassian was hardly with her anymore. Yet, when the medics flooded into the bay and pulled her away from him to assess the two of them separately, she found it difficult to let him go. Jyn held onto his hand until she literally couldn’t anymore, having realized he had lost consciousness, she started to call his name but her voice was overpowered by the medics all shouting, “Captain Andor” and “Sir” in his face. One of the medics, a woman with bright red hair tied into a braid to lay against the middle of her back, pulled out a device and waved it over the length of his fragile body, from head to toe. A stretcher was brought in on the red head’s demand but when they went to move him from the seat to it, his eyes opened and he jolted like one does from a nightmare. 

One moment he was limp and quiet and the next he was throwing up his arm to get their hands off of him. He saw Jyn held back and surrounded by people trying to keep her still while others tried to move him further away from her and she realized he was fighting them because he thought they were in danger, his instinct and confusion blinding him to the fact that they were rebels, allies, trying to _help_. So, she stopped. She offered a tight, closed-lipped smile through the gaps in shoulders and heads of the men and women that stood between them and he looked around to see where they were and he stopped too, calmed. 

Finally, with two docile survivors on their hands -- the other five already ushered away to med bay -- the medics let Jyn go to Cassian upon her request and he watched her come over with his dark eyes following her form, holding her gaze with an intensity that made her shiver and her stomach clench. She stopped at his side, the medics ready to transport him on the stretcher, but all she could do was tilt her head and stare as she hooked her index finger around his in a subtle touch, one that she hoped would go unnoticed by the others. He squeezed her finger and the corners of her mouth lifted just a little as she squeezed back but a blink and they were moving him. Jyn followed down the ramp and halfway into the base when the medics ushered her to a different part of med pay, much to her protest. 

It was a full day and a half before she was released from med bay, still covered in bandages but the majority was external injuries, soft tissue injuries. She was nearly blown to pieces by a fighter but she hadn’t been shot and she hadn’t fallen twenty feet, hitting every rafter on the way down. The sounds still echoed in her mind and she had to pinch her eyes shut against the flashes in her mindseye at seeing Cassian’s body angled so unnaturally so far below her on the platform, the resounding thud made her lips purse into a disgusted glower of sorts even though it was not aimed at the people she walked by down the hall to the intensive care bay. 

She stopped just outside the door, knowing that Cassian was behind it. Knowing he was still in the bacta tank. Knowing it might have just as negative effect on her as seeing him fall had but also knowing that she needed to see him. Needed to see with her own eyes that he was still alive.

It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out that amoung the casualties were Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut. Kaytoo had died just outside the door she and Cassian were behind, his last words coming through the comlink in Cassian’s hand. Of those who volunteered for the suicide mission, Jyn had not expected to be one of the ones to come back and guilt sat in the back of her throat like acid, burned a hole through her chest even though she knew it had had to be done. Even though Cassian had, in his own way, promised it was worth it; what they had done was what the rebellion was always in pursuit of. It had validated everything they had done in the past, the blood shed, the people lost -- things that still haunt many and would otherwise regret had they not committed to their first, real chance. 

The mission succeeded and they had hope again. Hope that her father had been the catalyst for. Hope that Cassian, Bodhi, Baze, Chirrut, and Kaytoo had fueled to burn bright. Hope that all the rebellion shared now. 

She wanted that hope to be enough to say it was worth it but if she lost everyone; her parents, Saw, and the only friends she had made in her life, she could not help but wonder if it really was worth it. How many good men and women followed them into that mission, how many were lost, how many of Cassian’s friends?

Jyn opened the door and all the droids and two doctors, a human and an ithorian, looked to her. 

“You should not be in here,” one of the droids chastised but she ignored them and walked up to the tank. Thankfully the droid was corrected by one of the doctors who recognized her from the debriefing and let her pass. 

The Captain floated in bacta with all his clothes off aside from the med bay’s provided undergarment and the breathing mask. His eyes were shut and through the warp of the tank and veil of liquid, he appeared so much younger, so free of stress and burden. She stood in front of him, her head tilted back, fighting the urge not to rest her hand on the glass like it would bring her closer to him somehow. He was unconscious and though it might bring her comfort it would do nothing for him. This would have to be enough; seeing him was enough. 

Jyn clenched her fists, remained an extra few seconds, and left. 

Over the course of the next few days, she helped to find what could have become of the transmission that Princess Organa had intercepted; became of the princess herself. When she was not working, helping the best she could, she would visit Cassian, check on his status, then go to her quarters and rest. It was not sleep, necessarily, it was laying in bed and staring at nothing with the lights out. Eventually, she would pass out but she would only wake a few hours later to her alarm and go back to work. 

Although she was far from an intelligence officer, Jyn had learned, while working for Saw, how to translate and decrypt messages. It was the best she could do when there was no battle to be fought, nothing to infiltrate or steal. 

Five days after the battle of Scarif, the princess was brought back by two men, a wookie, and a couple of droids in a bucket of bolts; a bunch of nobodies. The droid, an R2 unit, was rushed to the command center and plugged into the main computer while everyone crowded around and stared at the massive, double-sided screen in anticipation, expectation.

The plans were real and delivered. Her father had truly made it; a way to ‘bring the whole system down’ and, with it, the empire to it’s knees. 

It brought tears to her eyes and in an attempt to stave off the rush of emotions; joy, mourning, relief, guilt, Jyn frowned and held her breath for seven seconds before releasing it slowly through her nose as she listened to the analysis of it. Her mask on and emotions bottled for the next hour and a half, the council divided for the night after a copy of the plans were made -- just to be safe. They would review and make the plan to attack the Death Star in the morning. 

That afternoon, while she had been in the command center reviewing her father’s work, the doctors had removed Cassian from the bacta tank and took him out of the ICB to a different bay for observation and recovery. That night, Jyn did not return to her room. 

She dragged a chair across the floor, the whole time it made a screeching sound which momentarily drowned out the constant whirring and humming of machines, the steady beep of his heart monitor that made her both unnerved and reassured. Once she was satisfied with it’s position, she sat in the chair and stared at Cassian like one does a painting they’re asked to understand the subjective meaning behind. 

After a few minutes, she inhaled deeply and straightened her back while she lifted her hands up to pull the tie out of her hair, releasing it from the tight bun to instead fall around her shoulders. It felt good, as it always did, and she rubbed her fingertips in a massage along her scalp before she pushed her fingers through the roots of her hair to pull the majority to the right side of her head. It caused the follicles to ache but in a good way which brought a content sigh to her lips as she dropped her hands back into her lap and leaned back in the chair to regard the slumbering man in front of her.

The droid had told her that he was still sedated but they were weaning him off. He could wake anytime but it seemed Cassian was more tired than five days of sedation could relieve. If she did not have nightmares and the guilt of her friends’ deaths weighing her mind, she figured she could sleep just as long. So, she waited patiently, lifted her legs to rest on the edge of his bed, her ankles crossed and one heel balanced on the mattress while she crossed her arms against her chest and watched his chest slowly rise and fall. 

The next day, she joined Leia and the generals in the command center, leaning over the console that tracked the fighters, their voices coming through the speakers. If she was any sort of pilot she would have joined them in the strike against the Death Star. Standing there listening to men and women utter their last words, screaming as their ships lit fire and crashed, was more difficult to listen to than she could ever imagine. It made her feel helpless and angry. Many were kids, bright eyed and hopeful in making a difference, and they would not make it back to share their stories that they had long anticipated experiencing for the sake of telling their friends and family about it. Although Skywalker was one of those kids, it was he who made the final shot -- one last chance -- and hit it like a bullseye. A one in a million shot with a computer and he did it with his naked eye. 

Leia and the others screamed and jumped in a unified rejoice and though Jyn smiled, her heart racing with exhilaration of the victory, the moment of triumph felt more like a relief. Her body sagged as she braced herself against the edge of the console, gripping the edge with her fingers until her fingertips were white.

After she confronted Cassian on Eadu, he had correctly reminded her that this fight was something she only began to care about a week and a half ago but somehow it was a lifetime of stress that rolled off her back. It was over. 

Surely the Empire would scatter. 

Afterwards, while the rest of the rebel base celebrated, partied, Jyn returned to med bay and dragged the chair back to Cassian’s bedside -- the droids kept putting it back where it “belonged”. She pulled it closer than before, however, her knees brushed against the side of the mattress and she hardly had to lean forward to rest her elbows on the edge, if she wanted to. For now, she sat up straight in the chair and tucked her hair behind her ears, having not returned it to a bun since she removed the tie the night before. 

He was so soundly asleep, so peaceful, so blissfully unaware of the stressful, frantic search for plans that had essentially delivered themselves. When he finally woke, she would present him with the news that they had both fought to make heard. As she stared at his profile, the extra length in his scruff, the dark circles around his eyes, she only grew impatient for him to wake; excited to share. Of course, behind the win, the achievement of their lifetime -- of their parents’ life time before them -- was the sacrifice of many, many lives. Not only those of Rogue one either. 

Cassian’s words resonated in her chest like the reverberations of a gong: the things people had been forced to do, what he had to, in the name of the rebellion, for the sake of information, the effort in getting a one up against the Empire had all led to this moment but at what cost? Not just lives but livelihoods sacrificed, childhoods stolen by war, tragedy. The very souls of children raised to be soldiers as early as six years old. 

At some point Jyn’s hands had found Cassian’s on the bed and there was a tear rolling down her cheek as she pressed his hand between her palms and braced her elbows on the mattress, on either side of his. She swallowed thickly and pressed her forehead against his knuckles, doing her best to breathe through the hiccups in her lungs as her emotions struggled to break through the barricade she spent most of her life fortifying. 

It had been so much easier when she had nothing invested. When she only looked out for herself and the next big heist to pull, no attachments, no concern about what any rebels or imperial agents were doing because she didn’t have the decency to look up half the time. She had been passive and that made it easier to pretend it didn’t matter. That she didn’t care. 

Now she did care and it hurt as much as it alleviated. 

“Jyn.”

Her head snapped up fast enough for her hair to go flying back like curtains ripped away from the window, her eyes wide as she looked back at Cassian, who was curling his fingers around the back of her hand. She inhaled sharply through her nose, not realizing that it would turn out more like a sniffle. Half a dozen greetings ran through her head; ‘hi’, ‘you’re awake’, ‘how do you feel’, ‘ _Cassian_ ’. 

She settled for: “we won.” 

Cassian narrowed his eyes and waited.

“The plans… someone _was_ listening and, Cassian, the Death Star is destroyed,” she said in a whisper, involuntarily squeezing his hand harder. “It’s over, Cassian… it’s over.”

Although his lips did not move, his eyes lit up and crinkled around the corners as he held her gaze. “We won,” he echoed and she nodded vigorously.

O.o.O.o

Cassian had to get surgery for the damage done to his spine but they couldn’t do it until they evacuated Yavin 4, which was compromised. That kept him on bedrest until then, immobilized. Knowing what that could do to someone like him, Jyn stayed with him and brought a pack of pazaak cards to play on his lap in the med bay bed. If it was her, she would be going insane not being able to get out of bed and move around, work, be of use. Of course, Cassian had tried a couple times but when Jyn had learned that his attempts to stand could cause him permanent damage, leaving him paralyzed, she threatened to strap him down until they got to the new base.

The Captain, knowing she was not joking, eventually listened and relented to the demands of doctors and Jyn alike. 

“I’m just saying I think it’s _sithspit_ that you’re not getting one too,” she grumbled and played one of her subtraction cards to bring her total number to 19. 

“Jyn,” he sighed, exasperated, as he took his turn and busted, causing him to sigh for a whole other reason. 

“What? It’s not fair that some farm boy and smuggler and his... walking carpet get medals for, what, following through on the plans that we got? On the plan that we proposed and started in the first place? You should be getting one too!” She paused and then pointed at him, her eyes wide and eyebrows lifted as though to better make her point as she added, “most everyone says our group of rogues are heroes. Some even call us self-less.” It wasn’t just them, Rogue One, it was all the men and women that volunteered for the strike and she strongly concurred with the adjectives being used to describe those men and women.

Cassian scooped up his cards to shuffle them into his deck and she did the same with hers but he looked at her as he did it. “Jyn, I still went rogue. I’m lucky if they don’t demote me let alone court martial me.” 

Jyn shook her head incredulously, her mouth dropping open and eyes unfocused as she looked around the room as though searching for the words to say in response. 

“Do _you_ want one,” he asked and lifted one eyebrow, his eyes tightening at the corners in the way that she was beginning to recognize as a smile. He was making fun of her now, she knew it, but instead of offending her it made her look back at him. 

“No,” she scoffed, as she flipped the first card for her spread along the open space on his bed, parallel with his thigh. “What am _I_ going to do with a medal? You’re the decorated Alliance Captain, I’m saying you deserve to be recognized for what you’ve accomplished. For what you did. And not just on Scarif.” 

She ended her turn and was waiting to see what he flipped, her eyes cast down to his lap to watch for his card but when it did not come, she lifted her gaze to meet his and was taken aback by how fond his expression was at the moment. It was subtle, of course, his face was essentially frozen into a spy mask he had worn since he was six years old but she was beginning to get the hang of reading his emotions in his eyes, in the subtle way his features would relax or tighten. 

“So do you,” he finally said, still holding her gaze until the blush turned into a pleasant heat in her stomach that made her look away. 

“But they don’t care about that… just that Leia was rescued and they made a lucky shot.” 

“I’d say we got lucky--” Cassian started but clearly cut himself off, her eyebrows lowering further over his eyes and he finally flipped a card from his deck. 

She knew what he was thinking; maybe they got lucky because they just barely escaped being obliterated by the Death Star’s devastating weapon but what they had lost was hardly luck or fortune. Jyn stole a glance at him but he resolutely stared at his cards instead until she played her card and he finally blinked. 

“They won’t really court martial you,” she started, indicating that she was ‘staying’ her hand at a total of 17, but paused in her address to him until he looked at her again. “Will they?”

He arched a brow but said nothing before he played a card and got a perfect score, 20, and looked at her triumphantly. She threw her action cards down on top her played cards in a show of defeat and let out a choking huff at the back of her throat as she leaned her head back.


	2. Hoth

Their quarters are right across the hall from one another, so, Cassian could hear her moving about her cabin, tinkering with things or taking a shower in the refresher because it was something to do and occupy the night. He knew that she did not sleep through the night. Lately, however, he had heard her door swish open and faint footsteps fading down the hall. He figured that she left to walk around, maybe work on a project for the rebellion, volunteer a watch. The problem was, she was looking more tired than usual. Before, at least she tried to rest while in her room between the restless moments, between dreamless states and the encroaching nightmares. Now she was simply exhausted during meetings even though she was an expert at covering it up, the only give away was the darkness looming under her eyes. 

He tossed the blanket off his legs and got out of bed, pulled on his boots and blue jacket before he headed out into the frosty halls of the Hoth rebel base. Just as he looked to the right, down the hall, she turned left down the next corridor. The door hissed shut behind him and he followed after her but lost her at the next intersection when she had already turned off and he only just made it around the first turn. Cassian frowned but followed his instincts and found her only ten minutes later in the gym the generals had had set up to practice hand to hand combat for the new recruits. It was essentially Jyn’s office during the day, it was her job, as a recently promoted Lieutenant, to train the newcomers but she was also a spy, an infiltrator, and that took her out on missions more often than not. 

It took her away from him and despite the fact that he had tried to put some distance between the two of them, to keep from becoming too attached, he hated when they were apart. He hated not knowing when or if she would come back.

Her huffs of effort and the sound of her body slamming against the punching bag carried out the open door and halfway down the hall. She had her hands wrapped, somewhat effectively, but she was mostly kicking rather than punching. 

Cassian leaned against the doorjamb with his left shoulder, his arms crossed against his chest, bunching up his jacket so the fur-lined hood was pressed up more against his jaw when he leaned his head to one side. He watched her, silently, but it only took a few moments for her to feel his eyes on her, he knew. She stopped with one final, powerful roundhouse kick to the side of the bag, making it swing widely on it’s chain, which creaked with the movement on nearly frozen links. She stood in front of the bag, facing it, her hands at her sides, but turned her head to look at him, her chin in line with her shoulder which was pointed at him. 

Their gazes met and her shoulders slumped before she turned to look ahead at the bag and finally held out her arm to stop it from swinging, ceasing the high pitched groan. 

It had been three years since the Death Star had been successfully destroyed but they had been in hiding for much of the time ever since. There had been hope that once the weapon was destroyed that the empire might scatter for awhile but instead they came back with strength and forces that were three times as strong. They were constantly on the lookout for the probes that Vader had ordered sent out and while Jyn had to leave often to try to find where the probes were coming from and other such, infiltrating missions, he still worried that her insomnia would catch up to her at the worst possible moment. 

One day she wouldn't come back.

Jyn started to unwrap her knuckles, still standing in front of the bag, and Cassian pulled away from the frame and uncrossed his arms, shoving his hands in his pockets as he watched, waited for her to join him. When she was finally done, wrapping the fabric up into a sort of ball to toss on the table in the corner, she went to her jacket she left on the pile of sparring weapons and paused with her hand clutching a handful of the cloth but she did not lift it. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, her head bowed and gaze staring at the back of her own hand. 

“I didn’t ask anything,” he replied but wondered if he should have. He cared and wanted her to know that but he already knew, after three years of knowing her, that there was not much that she wanted to say about what haunted her at night. Some days he thought he knew what it was about but then again she had a lifetime of ghosts that followed her, not just those they lost together. He did too. 

Chirrut had surmised early on that Cassian carried a cage with him; his past mistakes, those he had killed in the name of preserving the rebellion, those he lost. It was accurate in a way that at the time it had settled in the pit of his stomach like a hot rock and he had rejected it but ever since they beat the Death Star he had felt some hope that maybe his cage wasn’t so indestructible after all. 

Maybe hers wasn’t either. 

She looked to him at his response and inhaled deeply as she finally pulled her white jacket over her beige, long sleeved shirt. After it was fastened she walked over to him and lifted her chin to look directly at him. They shared something meaningful in the exchange of glances and when she started to walk away, her steps were just a little bit lighter than they had been a moment before. He followed her after she looked over her shoulder to check to see if he was coming and caught up to her after three, longer strides before falling into step with her. They nabbed some emerald wine from the mess hall and hid under one of the parked x-wings at the back of the hangar. 

After they had passed the bottle back and forth a few times, forgoing the use of cups, Jyn handed it back to him and reclined back with her gloved hands planted on the floor behind her, making a 30 degree angle with her back and extended arms. She threw her head back and stared up at the underbelly of the ship as she released a sigh that caused her breath to steam and crystalize above her. 

Cassian took another sip before looking over his shoulder at her as he blindly set the bottle down beside his thigh, the glass clanking against the steel floor. 

Still, she didn’t say anything. 

Finally he looked away again and clenched his jaw for five seconds before he spoke up. “You need to take care of yourself, Jyn.”

He didn’t need to have eyes on the back of his head to know that her head had snapped up and she was no longer reclined, relaxed. 

“I know you don’t sleep--”

“Neither do you,” she responded, her tone sharp. 

Cassian winced, if only because he knew he was upsetting her but he would rather have her be mad at him for meddling than have to hear bad news from her team. “I may not get the best sleep but I do sleep because...” he turned to look at her now and as he expected she was sitting up and her dark eyes were hard with anger, her jaw set in the stubborn way he was so often fond of. “Because there are people depending on you and if you’re too tired-”

“Excuse me, I know how to handle myself!”

“Do you,” he asked, his voice rising to match her escalation, their voices echoing in the empty, otherwise silent hangar.

Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open to argue further but then she snapped it shut and she stood up keeping low enough not to bang her head on the ship but, once she was clear, she stood straight and started to walk away. He got up and chased after her. 

“Jyn.” He grabbed her arm at the crook of her elbow to slingshot around her and stand in her path. “Is this about Scarif? Or… your father--?” She yanked her arm free of his hand and he paused, hesitating, at seeing how furious and wounded she looked. His lips parted and he rocked forward on the balls of his feet before resting on his heels again when he finally had the courage to add; “let me help you.”

“I don’t _need_ help, Cassian,” she said but he held her gaze, stayed in her path. Her chin wrinkled for just a moment and finally she broke off the defiant glare and looked to the side sharply, turning her whole head to avoid his eyes. 

He waited. 

“I’m not… I don’t…” she huffed, something angry and petulant. When she continued it was after she looked at him again and with her arms spread out wide at her sides. “I don’t _stick around_. I may have rebelled and fought with Saw but I didn’t _stay_ anywhere. Now all of a sudden I’m supposed to just-” she dropped her arms to her sides, her hands slapping against her thighs. 

Cassian tilted his head to the side and brought his face closer to hers. “This is your home.”

“No,” she shook her head and her lower lip thinned slightly as she pushed it up against her upper lip. 

It splintered something in his heart to see her look so sad about it, worse still was that she didn’t feel like this was her home; it felt like a rejection. 

Somehow, she seemed to sense that and her hand reached out and snatched his hand, gripping the side of his palm. “I’ve never had a home that lasted…”

“It’s not the place so much as it’s--”

“Exactly,” she murmured and her fingers shifted against his hand, squeezing him as she lowered her gaze and dipped her chin so she was staring at his chest. Her emotions were warring on her face, her eyes looked shiney but nothing was welling in her eyelids and his heart broke for her. For her fear; this burden she was carrying in silence. She was waiting for doom every day and every night, waiting for something or someone to wrench everything they had built away, she had invested more into the rebellion in three years than she had into anything else her entire life. 

Without thinking about it, he used their connected hand to pull her closer while he simultaneously stepped forward, crashing their chests together as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Her body was tense under his touch, her arms didn’t move to return the embrace right away but when they did her whole body went slack against him aside from her tightening grip around his waist, her cheek pressed against his sternum, pressing impossibly closer. 

“I’m with you, Jyn,” he whispered against the top of her head and she lifted her shoulders to her ears and squeezed him just a little harder for a moment. “Just tell me what you need.” 

“I don’t know,” she admitted and nuzzled her nose against him for a moment before re-positioning her head so her ear was pressed over the strongest sound of where his heart beat. “But this is good.”

Cassian smiled against her hair and breathed in deeply as he started to move his hands, rubbing his palm gently between her shoulder blades. 

In the following days he did his best to provide her with little comforts throughout the day. They often worked together when it came to intelligence matters but when Draven was killed in an imperial attack against one of their attempted -- now abandoned -- bases, he had stepped into the role; not as General but as Major, he was still next in command, and that often kept him in different meetings that she was not cleared to attend. Still, he found spare seconds to squeeze her shoulder in passing or sent her a quick message about his day: _I swear the council talks just to hear their own voices_. Ways to show her that he was not going anywhere, not if he could help it. 

Since their talk, she seemed to be less restless and his worry that she would one day be packed up and gone, needing to get away from it all, slowly decreased; though never gone. 

They prepared for a mission together not long after. He was still an intelligence officer, despite the promotion, and the best spy they had and she was finally free of any solo spy missions; the opportunity to work together again was too good to pass up in either of their opinion. It would be their first mission together in over a year and they needed to go over the details. Jyn held the holopad out in front of them as they walked side by side, down the corridor, her right shoulder nearly brushing against the frost covered wall and his right shoulder was tucked slightly behind her left so that he could angle more towards her to see what she was referencing. 

“How did she get in touch with us--"

“And what _exactly_ am I supposed to know,” Leia’s voice carried through the hall and Jyn looked up from the pad to see the princess and Captain Solo coming towards them, both of them walking with purpose and urgency, Leia just one step behind Han as they dodged between the others coming the opposite direction. 

Cassian fell behind Jyn entirely so they walked in a single file down the hall to narrowly miss the bickering couple. 

“C’mon! You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me!”

“Yes,” Leia exclaimed. “You’re a great help to us. A natural leader!”

Their voices faded some with distance but Jyn and Cassian could see that they had stopped at the corner to look at one another. Though they didn’t eavesdrop, Cassian and Jyn could still overhear their argument, and he looked to Jyn, who looked up at him at the same moment and raised her eyebrows as she smiled by frowning in amusement. He caught the way Jyn’s eyes flicked down to his lips but then she held the holopad out again, without comment, and it was back to work. 

They just started to walk again when he heard Han: “you could use a good kiss!”

It wasn’t until a day later did he and Jyn find out they would not be able to launch their mission. Echo Base had been discovered, the shields raised as the order came to launch a surface defense and evacuate. 

“We need pilots, Jyn,” he said, fast-walking towards the hangar at a pace that Jyn had to nearly jog to keep up with.

He saw out the corner of his eye that Jyn got shoulder checked by someone coming from the opposite direction but she barely lost a step and only drew closer to him as they continued towards the front of the base. “I know that but--”

He stopped to the side of the massive door leading into the hangar where over a hundred of people were running around to get into fighters or helped to prep the fighters for battle; raising droids up and into their stations, making sure all the fuel tanks were topped off, running quick diagnostics, or fetching gear the pilot forgot to grab in the rush of the moment. The base was buzzing with white noise from the tech and the chatter of people. Cassian gripped her biceps and leveled her with a serious look, barely a handbreadth between their chests.

Jyn’s mouth was turned down into a more exaggerated frown than usual but, without having to say anything about it, she understood the meaning in his gaze and nodded solemnly. 

When he turned to get to his airspeeder, which already had the other pilot sitting in the back waiting for him, Jyn followed behind him despite no longer protesting his commitment in going out. He settled into his seat, greeting the pilot; “ready for this, Mical?”

“Yes, Sir,” the blonde responded and flicked a couple switches. 

Cassian was settling into his seat, his restraints closed around his chest, and was pulling on his helmet when he heard footsteps clanging on the rungs of the metal ladder. He looked up, through his tinted visor, and saw Jyn’s head poke up and continue to ascend until she was taller than him in his seat and leaning over him slightly. Jyn didn’t give him the opportunity to ask what she was doing before she gripped his head between her hands, the sides of his helmet kept him from feeling the pressure but he followed where she angled him to keep his gaze on her face. 

“Come back,” she ordered before clenching her jaw to stave off the emotion of letting him go; of the idea that there was a possibility he would not. 

He nodded and she bent down and pressed her lips to the top corner of his visor, out of the way of his direct line of sight. For a moment, she lingered and pressed her forehead against where his would be if the helmet wasn’t in the way, then she released him and pulled away all at once. During her descent she avoided his gaze and focused on watching where she was putting her feet but he knew the reason why and turned his head sharply to look at his readouts; focusing on anything but what just happened. He needed to focus. 

“Sir--?”

“Not a word,” he ground out, his voice more gruff than he intended, and pressed the button to lower the top; the mechanisms hissing and metal grinding against the track.

O.o.O.o

Just as she had countless times before, Jyn stood in the command center and watched the monitors to track the battle but this time she helped to chart the safest routes for the transports to take the others to the rendezvous point, to Haven. Leia worked with the others to determine what wings of the base needed to evacuate and provided the clearance codes for when the pilots needed to lift off between waves of attacks.

“Transport one is away,” one of the men announced from the control panel where Leia stood beside him. 

Meanwhile the comms lit up with chatter from the Rogue team on the surface. 

“I copy, Rogue Leader,” 

“Rogue Two, get that cable out!”

“Rogue One --” Jyn lifted her head and looked to the screen that showed the dots, the locations, of all the fighters. “Keep your eye on the transports, make sure they don’t get flanked.”

“Copy,” Cassian’s voice responded and Jyn took a calming, deep breath. 

In a matter of minutes their casualty count was sky high, akin to the wipeout on the attack of the Death Star, worse than Scarif. Hearing their voices helped to make the safe routes for transports, which Jyn found and relayed to Leia, who gave the authorization but she wished she did not have to listen to it all. The only reason why she did not go entirely insane was the assuring power hearing Cassian respond to chatter had over her nerves. 

“Mical-- _Mical_ ,” Cassian’s voice shouted suddenly, slicing through her focus. 

“Rogue One,” Luke’s voice came over the com in response. 

“He’s gone.”

“Are you still in the air?”

A pause and the blood ran out of Jyn's face, worried that he was hurt, worried the ship had caught fire. She looked at the screen with his dot on it and stared at it with desperation. Just as she was about to slam her fist on the console in frustration, his voice came through the speaker: "yeah". Jyn dropped her head down, chin touching her chest, in overwhelming relief but just as quickly looked back at the dot with a furrowed brow; she could imagine the look on Cassian’s face, sorrow hidden behind a twenty-three year old mask, and her heart clenched in empathy. 

While Cassian, Luke, and Rogue Two exchanged the next plan to take out another AT-AT, Jyn finally looked away from the double-sided screen and back to the map but not before catching Leia’s worried gaze, the princess watching her from over her shoulder. The women shared a meaningful look but Jyn gave nothing away and relayed the next opportunity for a pull away. Just then the base shook and chunks of ceiling came down around them. Sparks flew and electronics sputtered as they fractured under the weight of rock and frozen ground. Everyone in the command center ducked and tried to make themselves smaller on instinct. 

They kept working, they had to make sure everything was accounted for. 

Then Han came sprinting in, jumping over a downed rafter and grabbed at Leia. He looked to the princess and insisted she evacuate, the latter looked to Jyn and beckoned her to join them. Jyn looked at the screen and saw Rogue One was still moving about and she felt hope blossom in her chest before she finally stepped away from the circular console and joined the rest of the crew in abandoning the command center to catch one of the last two transports. 

Somehow she got in front of Han and Leia but behind the others, who were grouped together and running for the bay. Another direct hit had Jyn nearly stumbling into the wall and forward just as the ceiling collapsed behind her. Something hard and heavy smacked in the center of her back and she went careening forward onto her hands and knees before she pulled her legs close to her chest and threw her arms over her head as the rest came tumbling down, raining around her like hail. When the cave-in stopped she moved her arms away from her head and planted her palms on the floor while she turned her head to look behind her. She was covered in snow and a couple of rocks scattered around her but aside from the initial, large rock that sent her forward in the first place she was unharmed. She scrambled to her feet, however, when she realized Han and Leia were not in sight. 

Jyn patted herself down to find her comm and called for them, holding the cylinder electronic tight in her fist. 

“We’re not going to make it to the transport. I’ll get her out on the Falcon,” Han’s reply came. 

“Good luck,” she responded then spun on her heel and sprinted to the bay, hoping she could still make it. 

She got to the bay and the last rebel to board the second of two remaining transports saw her and waved her forward. “C’mon!” 

Jyn kept running but her gaze was on the open hangar door where she could see the battle outside, the x-wings and airspeeders racing around AT-AT’s and fighters alike. Her heart caught in her throat -- Cassian was one of those fighters -- but she did not have time to watch. She leapt into the open transport and watched the door close after they had already lifted off.

O.o.O.o

Cassian had just delivered the final shot to the neck of the downed AT-AT and was circling around to cover the transport when he realized that two were taking off at the same time.

“Transport, what are you doing,” he shouted into his headset just as he clocked the last AT-AT turning the head to look at the take off. He fired several shots and tried to pull it’s attention but it was too late and the AT-AT fired at the transport, which exploded instantly. “No!” 

His blood went cold in his veins, his heart frozen in his chest, and he felt like his eyes might explode from internal pressure in his brain. He could not believe his eyes. 

There were at least thirty people on each transport and they were gone in a split second. 

Jyn had to be on one of the last two to leave, it had been part of the evacuation plan; it was her job to find the routes. The last two weren’t supposed to leave at the same time. That was not part of the plan. He watched as the wrecked transport crashed to the frozen ground in slow motion then, out of the corner of his eye he saw the AT-AT explode to his left and crumble to the ground and he finally pulled on the controls and pulled away, flying back towards the fight to finish what was started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple of things, just for the sake of it
> 
> \- I have nothing against our heroes of the original trilogy. Honest. I just think that if Jyn met them she would be a little jaded that they got all the recognition even though she respects them for following through on what she and those who followed them to Scarif started. Just my opinion. 
> 
> \- Let me know what you think, please -- I love all feedback (good and constructive, that is)
> 
> \- Finally, **THANK YOU FOR READING** :)


	3. Haven part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not beta-read, all mistakes are my own. 
> 
> I do not own Star Wars or any of these characters. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

His skin was _crawling_ with anxiety and irritation. It felt like there were bees in his brain, stinging at the back of his eyes while acid choked him in the back of his throat. He landed in their freighter mere minutes ago but the ride to Haven had been too long and part of him had convinced himself that Jyn had been on the destroyed transport while the other clung to hope that she had been on the other. Now he had a sea of people all bustling around to find their friends and family like he was -- all of them in his way -- and the crowd was shoulder to shoulder but he pushed through them all, made his way through, to find one face. One person.

He shoved someone aside who had gotten in his way and not moved again, slid between other people, and weaved his shoulders between what remained all while his eyes scanned the massive room. His heart ached and the part of him convinced Jyn had possibly made it was withering away the longer he looked without finding her. The weight of the loss made his skin feel like it was being pricked with a million needles but then, just as he felt he could not take it anymore, everything ceased; the sounds of people, droids, and the hum of the ship’s drive -- all became silent to the sound of his heart beating in his ears. 

The agonizing anxiety causing him so much physical discomfort ebbed away when he finally saw her. 

Above him, standing on the top of some piled cargo crates at the back of the hangar, was Jyn looking around eagerly. When she found his face in the crowd he watched her eyes widen and a smile spread, baring her teeth as she jumped down from the box and back into the throng. He became far more assertive in moving through the others than before, his hands going to backs and shoulders to keep them out of his way and he could see her moving just as quickly and eagerly until finally she had enough space to run at him and jump into his arms, her arms around his neck and feet no longer touching the floor. Cassian felt her nose tucked behind his ear, felt her puffs of breath against the side of his neck, and it brought a broad grin to his face as he held her tight against him and tucked his face between the space of her neck and shoulder.

O.o.O.o

Hoth was considered one of the greatest defeats they had suffered against the Empire in years and the Falcon was missing as was Skywalker. Jyn was sent on a seeker task, to find one or the other and bring them back to Haven but ultimately, it seemed, they either did not want to be found or the Empire did the finding for her. Eventually, Jyn returned empty handed -- something she did not like to do -- but Cassian quickly distracted her with the mission they had been planning before the attack on Hoth.

They all knew that the Empire was up to something other than trying to capture Skywalker and wipe out the rebellion, it wasn’t hard to figure out that they would be wanting to replace the planet killer as soon as possible, with or without Galen. The only problem was they didn’t know where the work was being done and how far along they were. Some of Cassian’s spies came back with whispers of where some defectors might be hiding out. Whispers and rumors that most in the rebellion would write off as inconsequential or irrelevant was what Cassian thrived on following up with and turning it into a solid lead - one way or the other. This particular whisper brought them to Nar Shaddaa: a smuggler’s moon as old as society as they knew it. 

“We’ll leave tomorrow,” he said and ushered her away from the command center on the freighter they had called home for the last couple of months since they had evacuated Hoth. Once they were out of view of the generals and council, Jyn readjusted her bag on her shoulder; she had just gotten off the ship and had come straight to the CC before so much as going to her room to drop her stuff off. Cassian looked at her for a prolonged moment and opened his mouth to say something but a group of rebels walked by and he paused to watch them pass before he grabbed her hand and led her to her room. She waved her palm in front of the scanner to get in and, after they both entered, he closed the door behind them.

Jyn felt renewed just seeing him. With his hand in hers, his gaze inquiring without uttering a single word, she offered him a reassuring smile. 

“I’m okay, Cass.” She squeezed his hand briefly before releasing it to go sit on the edge of her bed. He followed her retreating form with his eyes, turning his head but not moving the rest of his body. Jyn let out an incredulous laugh, at his expense for looking so stiff yet so worried at the same time, and she set her bag down to her left side. “I’m just tired.”

“Which is why we’re leaving tomorrow. You need to rest.” 

She nodded and tilted her head to the side, some hair that was loose of her bun fell away from her skin and hung in the empty air. “What about you,” she asked. “When was the last time you sat down? Or drank some water? Ate?”

Cassian looked away from her before he ran a rough hand down the front of his face and she knew that meant he didn’t remember but didn’t want to admit it. 

“Come here,” she requested, the cadence of her voice lifting into a question rather than falling like a demand. To try to sweeten the invitation, she patted the space beside her with her right hand. 

He sucked on his tongue and looked at her with weary eyes that made her heart clench and her request nearly became a plea as she extended her right arm to him instead, her palm facing up. Finally, Cassian walked to her and took her offered hand as he sat down to her right. Jyn then shifted on the bed so her right leg was bent and her left leg draped over her ankle which hung off the edge of the mattress to face him directly. His hair was longer now and hung in his eyes as he looked at her, waiting patiently for whatever she had to say. 

Cassian was one of the busiest men on the ship, in the fleet, and yet he gave her the time she asked for, patient and willing; undivided attention all hers. 

“Will you stay with me,” she asked and lifted her free hand to brush his hair away from his eyelashes so they swept across his forehead. He blinked under her touch but didn’t move away or stop her. There was no indicator of how he felt about her question so she added: “just until I fall asleep.”

He swallowed thickly and his lower eyelids lifted some, narrowing his eyes without squinting, and she withdrew her hands from him and shook her head.

“Nevermind-”

“Yeah--”

They both froze and stared at one another. 

“You have work--”

“Oh, if-- yeah, you should--”

They stopped again and Jyn internally flinched but she tried to smile reassuringly, though she had a feeling it might look more like a grimace. 

“Go,” she said with an amused huff and jerked her head in the direction of the door but he seemed frozen in front of her, his dark eyes darting over her face so rapidly it almost made her dizzy watching him. 

Then Cassian lifted his right hand, catching her chin between the pad of his thumb and side of his index finger and she inhaled through her nose slowly. His eyebrows furrowed and lifted together in the middle of his brow but he let her go just as quickly as he had touched her. “Get some sleep, Jyn.”

He was halfway to the door when Jyn called his name and tossed him her container of water, aimed at his chest; it was half full but it was something. Cassian caught it with both hands, inspected it for a moment, then looked at her with his secret smile; the corners of his mouth didn’t move but his eyes brightened and tightened at the corners. To give her some semblance of peace, he opened it and took a long sip in front of her, making a show of it, before he re-capped it and took it with him as he left her room. 

After the door hissed shut, she kicked off her boots and laid down in her bed, the door to her right and a large window to her left that revealed a familiar picture of countless stars and an endless, ink black. 

She gazed out at space with heavy eyes, blinking slowly as she tried not to read too much into the awkward exchange. For three years they danced around something undefined and precious. Neither of them seemed to commit to addressing it, making their unspoken agreement into something more tangible. There was a time, a few months after Cassian had recovered from surgery that she had thought it was on the edge of falling into the light but he went on a mission for a few days immediately following and when he came back something had shifted. Since then it had grown again; like the first peek of a blossoming flower. With some nurturing, Jyn figured, it could bloom. 

The very notion made her heart skip a beat and she looked away from the window to stare at the white ceiling, her lips turned up slightly. Still, she dared not push too eagerly, perhaps for both their sakes; fear that he might not feel the same but worse yet was the damage he could deliver if she put her heart out to him, intentionally or not, it could be devastating. There was no thrill in jeopardizing the most meaningful relationship she had for a chance it could be more when she was already so content with what they had built.

Jyn rolled onto her side and tucked her hands under her head to look around the room, seeking a distraction from her traitorous brain. The room itself was large, not as big as Cassian’s or the generals’ but an eleven by twelve foot room with a private refresher was a suite in comparison to how she spent the last couple of months on a cramped ship in search of the Falcon. 

Better yet, Cassian was nearby. Despite the exchanged awkwardness, it was a relief and a comfort. The feeling of home washed over her and she closed her eyes; asleep in minutes.

O.o.O.o

“Do you ever consider the history of a place like this,” Jyn asked after they landed their private, light freighter on the refugee landing pad. Their clearance was easily accepted and they were walking down the main ramp into the market area where they were bombarded with sales vendors shouting what wares and deals they had.

Droids passed by and a gang of mercenaries, made up of twi'leks, humans, and a wookie, scowled at them from the shadows by some cargo crates. A pair of duros people bumped by Cassian but he just dead-eyed them and kept walking. 

“Yeah, I suppose. Sometimes.”

She quirked her lips to the side and looked at the door they were going through which read ‘Docks’ in bright neon letters overhead. The door hissed open and they walked into the elevator that would take them down further into the heart of the wretched place. While he punched in the proper buttons to lower them, she stole a glance at him; he was wearing a tan shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearm and a blue vest over top, left open, his pants were black and tucked into his calf-high, black boots, and his hair was combed back, much like the first time she ever saw him. He looked rather dapper. Just as he shifted his weight again, she looked away and stared at the lift doors, missing how he did the exact same thing to her. 

The doors hissed open and they stepped out onto the docks, which were much quieter with only a handful of others on a ramp leading to the only docked spaceship and a davaronion standing, on the opposite side of the platform from Cassian and her, by a door with a sign overhead that looked like it had been modified several times over the last century or so. There was space for two ships to dock with a platform between the spaces where the controls for releasing the docking clamps were, though there was no one visible in the glass booth. 

It was a person dressed in all dark blues and black, a hood pulled over their head and back to a solid wall, however, that stood out to Cassian, who indicated, with his head, to the figure to their left subtly. “That’s her.”

Jyn followed his gaze and nodded, following his lead over to the woman. 

“Morrigan,” Cassian inquired as he approached and the woman flinched back before she craned her neck towards him. 

“Sssh!” She looked around nervously and pulled the cloak tighter around herself. “Just-- do you have it or not?”

“I could ask you the same question.” 

Jyn kept her shoulder in line with Cassian’s but, while he negotiated for the information they came for, she kept a lookout and she did not like the way the dockworkers by the ship seemed to have stopped working and were milling about in a circle, glancing their way. It was understated but she had a bad feeling. Slowly, she lifted her right hand to rest on the grip of her gun and looked back at Morrigan, who seemed more concerned with stealing glances at her than talking with Cassian. 

“I…” Morrigan huffed and abruptly turned away and walked closer to the railing, near the edge of the docks. 

While the entire dock was bordered by a three foot railing, where the ships docked there was nothing but a platform with no guard rail and a straight drop down into the core of the city and Morrigan was walking right towards it in her tantrum of whether or not she could ‘do this’. Cassian walked after her, trying to calm the woman down with a soothing voice, his accent stronger than it was a moment ago, and a feigned smile on his lips. 

“Hey, it’s going to be alright…” 

Meanwhile Jyn moved in the direction of the occupied dock, several paces to the left of where Cassian was coaching the woman. The dockworkers approached and she could see they had weapons drawn; anything from a hydrospanner to a vibroblade to a blaster. “Uhm, Ca-- Fulcrum,” Jyn called, using his agent name, and looked over her shoulder. 

Cassian glanced over and that was all the time Morrigan needed. 

She grabbed Cassian’s vest with both hands and yanked him in the direction of the open air, trying to throw him off the platform. Jyn spun on her heel, her back to the crew, and screamed her protest but it was too late; Cassian went over the edge, his body twisting in his effort to try to find something to grab onto but he went head over heels. 

“No!!” Jyn’s cry hurt her throat, though she didn’t feel it at the time, the pitch of her voice higher than she thought it could go. 

She drew her weapon and fired three shots at mass center of the dark haired woman, who went down instantly. With her heart pounding in her ears, her throat feeling like it had closed up, Jyn spun back around and fired on the crew that was now running towards her with their weapons raised. Two out of the eight or so people had blasters and fired on her from a distance. She ducked and ran for cover which happened to be a speeder parked alongside the far wall Morrigan had originally been standing at. She crouched behind it and evaded being shot but her gaze slid over to the platform, passed the corpse of the ‘defector’. Her skin prickled at seeing the empty space, the last place she had seen Cassian, but a close call -- a blaster bolt barely missing her shoulder -- and Jyn was back in the battle. 

She laid down fire at those with blasters but the ones with melee weapons were sprinting at her, confident the ranged people would provide cover fire. She shifted to fire at them but being charged by five other people, she did not have enough time. 

One of them got right next to her and she tried to pull back and aim at him but he swung the hyrdrospanner at her head and she dodged it instead of pulling the trigger. The man recovered from the near miss faster than she did and brought the metal rod down on her knuckles, forcing the blaster from her fingers. He lifted it over his head again and she threw up her hands to catch his wrist at the same time that she brought her shin between his legs and landed a blow where no male species wanted to be kicked. He doubled over and she brought the same leg up to knee him in the nose. 

Once he was down, she grabbed her blaster and shot him once in the top of the head and shot the second man that nearly tackled her. Jyn barely had time to get her feet under her before she had to scramble for cover from blaster fire. She was nearly behind the speeder again when one of the bolts caught her in her right thigh, the pain like lightening up her leg and into her chest as she cried out and slammed her weight into the speeder. While she leaned against it on her left side, she glanced down at her fresh wound she had instinctively covered with her palm. Slowly, she lifted her trembling hand to reveal her tan colored pants already stained red, her blood spreading through the fabric. 

Adrenaline fueled her response as she held her blaster in both hands and poked back out from behind cover to get a look at her opponents before she took two shots, one to each head of those with the blaster rifles. Then she stood up and fired at the next closest of the three remaining, not seeing there was a fourth coming from her left with a vibroblade, a long sword raised and coming down towards her neck. She threw herself backwards in a dodge and dropped her blaster. It skidded across the smooth, steel flooring out of her immediate reach. 

Favoring her left leg, Jyn raised her hands in a defensive stance and danced around each strike from the man with the vibroblade while also keeping an eye on the other two, who were slowly coming closer, choosing just the right moment to gang up on her. The right moment for her came and she juked to the left, to the outside of his right arm, just as he went to stab her through the gut with her blade and she pivoted to grab his wrist with her right hand and with her left heel of her palm she slammed against his elbow. He dropped his vibroblade and stumbled in pain so she took his moment of weakness and brought her left elbow across his right cheekbone, knocking him to the ground. The other two moved then just as she turned to look at them. With no time to bend down and grab the blade, she leaned back on her heels and waited for the next attack. She fought them off simultaneously, ducking and dodging blows from their fists and weapons alike while she kicked them back and landed solid punches. 

One dirty hit to her wounded leg brought her down onto her right knee and it was quickly followed by one of them hitting her on the side of the head with the butt of their weapon. 

Jyn went careening into the floor face first, her palms slapping against the floor but the vibroblade was in reach. She shot her hand out to grab it but one of them stepped on her knuckles with the heel of his boot and she cried out in pain, her whole body going still. The second man planted his knees on either side of her hip and grabbed her shoulders. Her hand was released but the moment she was, she was flipped onto her back and the weight of the second man landed in her lap as she kicked her legs out in protest, the heels of her boots squeaking against the floor, in a struggle to get out from under him. She threw her arms up to push him away and keep his hands off of her, she managed to throw her hand up and slammed it into his nose which sent him leaning back briefly but when he came back it was with a solid punch to her left cheekbone, her head snapping to the right. Then he grabbed both her wrists and pinned them at her sides. 

She continued to struggle, her breathing rapid as she writhed under him to try to get away, twisting her arms in an attempt to free her hands from his grip but she was pinned and helpless. 

The first man returned, though she did not know where he went in the first place, and he crouched near her head, to her right. “We’re going to show you what we do with rebel scum,” he warned and held a knife out in front of her eyes, dragging the dull edge across the bridge of her nose. She stilled but when he pulled the knife away she angled her head up to look at the first person and spat in his face which only earned her another blow but this time to her right eye. 

Two shots sounded from a blaster and she instinctively flinched. 

She blinked and both of the men fell around her. The first man landed on his side, his knees even with her eye line, and the one who had been straddling her listed to her right, the gunshot wound to his left temple. Jyn grunted and let out huffs of desperation to buck his weight off of her. Wrenching her hands free of his death grip, she shoved at his chest and waist while shifting onto her side to get out from under his leg. By the time she was done with the efforts of freeing herself, she was on her hands and knees and looked straight ahead at where the shots had come from and the dread that had pooled in the pit of her stomach like lava instantly dissipated. 

“Cassian,” she breathed and forced herself onto her feet, adrenaline masking the pain from her wound, and she ran to the edge of the dock where he had his right arm hooked around the first rung of the guard rail, his left arm fully extended, resting on the floor and holding his blaster in her direction. His jaw was clenched, face flushed and sweaty, and his eyes looked wild but he was alive. 

She fell to her knees in front of him just as he set his gun down on the platform in favor of reaching around her and grabbing a fistfull of her pale blue shirt at her back while she hooked her arms under his armpits and heaved him back onto solid ground, also grabbing fistfulls of his clothes hard enough she could have ripped the vest. Once he was pulled up, his feet no longer dangling off any ledges, he seemed satisfied and tried to lean back on his elbows but she was eager to get far away from it. She kept her grip on him and yanked on him to keep crab-walking backwards until there was so much space between them and the edge, anyone who got any ideas would have a difficult time trying to redo what Morrigan had done. 

Finally, she knelt at his side left while he laid in a prone position, his elbows propped up behind him, and she held his face between her hands, forcing him to meet her gaze with tears in her eyes. “H-how,” she asked breathlessly.

“Support beam,” he replied and one corner of his mouth lifted into a half smile, a cocky grin. 

Her lower lip pressed into her upper lip as she gazed into his dark eyes with every bit of wonderment, relief, and despair she was feeling at the moment. Then she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his just as her chest shuddered with repressed sobs. “I thought you were gone,” she whimpered, her voice no more than a whisper but it cracked nonetheless. 

He had closed his eyes with her as their foreheads pressed together but at her fearful confession, he opened them again and lifted his right hand to cup the side of her face at the same time she dropped her hands; one to his chest and the other gripping his shoulder. Jyn pulled her head away from his but he kept his palm flush against her cheek, his thumb brushing gently under her cheekbone that was already starting to discolor, and she leaned into his touch while she studied his face, as if checking to see if the moment was real. 

Eventually, they looked around the destruction and Cassian stuck out his lower lip, impressed, and looked back at Jyn with one eyebrow arched. 

“What?" 

He shook his head and shrugged as he raised his eyebrows and purposely frowned in an exaggerated way. "Nothing," he said, his voice deeper than usual. 

"They _killed_ you... I couldn’t let that stand,” she justified and looked around with him before settling on the body of Morrigan. With a scowl, she got up from Cassian and went to the woman with the intent to search her for the information they came for -- or anything since it seemed this was all a trap to begin with. Before she started the pat down, Jyn ripped the hood away from obscuring the woman's face out of the need to make sure she was really dead. What she saw had her hand pulling away rapidly and she leaned back onto her heels. Morrigan no longer looked like Morrigan; her face had changed. After the initial shock, she recognized Morrigan was in fact a clawdite and she looked over to Cassian, who had since also gotten on his feet to join her. 

“I wonder if there ever was a defector,” he mumbled and crouched beside Jyn as she resumed her initial task and found a data chip.

She held it out for him to take and analyze. 

“It could be something,” Cassian commented and then something seemed to catch his attention behind her. 

Jyn looked over her shoulder and saw the devaronian was still standing outside the door like he did not see anything that just transpired, could not be bothered. “Hope he enjoyed the show,” she grumbled. 

He chuckled and her head snapped back to look at him again. A ghost of a smile still lingered on his lips, making her heart lurch with appreciation, fondness, and a longing she did not quite understand. She smiled back and stood up, incidentally putting her wound on her right thigh directly in his line of sight and the corners of his mouth turned downward so suddenly and so deeply that Jyn winced, out of guilt rather than pain. 

“You’re hurt,” he pointed out and shot to his feet, his hands going to her, gripping her arms like he expected her to keel over right then and there. 

“It’s a flesh wound…” 

He ignored her, it seemed, and led her over to the speeder, which had carbon scoring all over it, and had her sit down sideways in the seat, her legs hanging over the side. 

“Cassian,” she protested but he was already reaching in his vest pocket for bacta patches. His gaze was fierce and it made Jyn shiver some, watching how focused he was. Despite the intensity of his movements, the set of his jaw and stiffness in his shoulders, his touches were tender and gentle as he got her patched up the best he could while still out in the field, in the open. After he was done he did not seem satisfied and she grabbed his hands before he could occupy them with anything else and ducked her head, which was tilted slightly to one side to get him to look at her. 

When she finally had his gaze, she smiled fondly, still closed lipped, and said, “I’m alright.” 

The muscles in his jaw rippled through his skin and she released one of his hands to brush her thumb along his jawline, against his stubble, encouraging him to relax it. 

Finally, he blinked and nodded subtly. “Okay, let’s go.”

They withdrew from one another and walked away from the bodies, the chip in his breast pocket of his shirt. Jyn limped slightly but kept her normal pace alongside him. They got in the elevator Cassian jammed his thumb into the button for the refugee landing pad, his movements still rigid as agitation rolled off of him like waves. He mumbled something about getting her back home, his tone urgent despite being hushed. She glanced at him out the corner of her eyes and shifted just a little closer to him. 

Once they exited, she pointed to the otherside of the marketplace. “Oh look: a Pazaak Den,” she remarked with a teasing tone and looked up at him with an amused expression. “We should go play a match… unless you just want to give me your credits now, Andor.” She waggled her brows. “Feelin’ _pretty_ lucky.”

“You’re not funny,” he grumbled and grabbed her at her elbow; it was not rough and hardly possessive. It was an urging, protective gesture to keep her from being too far away from him, a warning to others to keep away. 

She knew he was wound up from everything and, honestly, so was she but she hated to see him so tense. Her brain was still buzzing with adrenaline not only from the fight but from seeing him be thrown -- watching him fall. Again. Nothing was funny about that, of course there wasn’t. She just needed to know that this wasn’t the end of something. Needed to know that he was okay. That _they_ were.

Jyn waited until they were in hyperspace to talk again, both of them sitting in their chairs while he stared idly ahead at the streaks of white and black, the stars passing by them at the speed of light. 

“Cassian,” she started and he looked over at her. “Are you… are you okay?”

He narrowed his eyes a moment, his jaw clenched but immediately unclenched. “I wasn’t shot if that’s what you’re asking,” he said and she did not miss the way his gaze flicked down to the red stain on her right thigh. 

“No, Cass, you were -- I mean you were…” she flinched and looked away, clenching her fists in her lap. Jyn had felt so powerless, so helpless as she watched him fly through the air in slow motion. “I thought you--”

While she had been staring at her own fingers, wringing in her lap, she did not realize he had unbuckled and rested his larger hand over both of hers. “I thought so too but I didn’t. I can’t say I enjoy the feeling of freefalling but I’m okay. Really. Maybe a little bit sore but nothing I can’t handle.”

She inhaled through her nose deeply though it was slightly shaky. “I shouldn’t have walked away.”

“Don’t,” he warned and shook his head once, twice, as he sucked on the inside of his lower lip slightly. “You know damn well it wasn’t your fault.” 

Jyn blinked, holding his gaze, but eventually she had to look away and forced herself to nod even though she did not fully agree. “Do you think it’s suspicious,” she asked, changing the subject. She looked back at him and wrinkled her nose. “I mean, if that was a trap, why did she have that on her?”

He seemed to ponder her question and furrowed his brow as he got back into his chair and pulled the chip out. “Good point. We’ll have the analysts look at it, make sure it’s not some sort of tracking device or… virus,” he said, studying it closely like he could read what was on it by sight alone.

“You don’t think that it was too easy?”

His head snapped to look at her sharply. “You were shot!”

Cassian’s reminder did more than make her think about her flesh wound, rather reminding her that he had nearly died. “‘Easy’ was the wrong word,” she admitted softly, diverting her gaze to the floor with a guilty expression and she heard him sigh and mutter an apology. 

“We’ll figure it out either way,” he promised and that was good enough for her.


	4. Haven part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't beta read, my apologies for any mistakes. 
> 
> I don't own Star Wars or the characters.

When they had returned to base the council approved the data’s validity and considered it admissible; the proper teams assigned to decrypt it and translate the information and now all they had to do was wait for the results. A few hours before Jyn and Cassian had returned, Luke and Leia returned with Chewie, the droids, and some man named Lando, who no one seemed to particularly like but didn’t protest to having him there. However, no Han Solo. Luke had needed immediate medical help after an altercation with Darth Vader himself, losing his hand and needing to be fitted with a mechanical one. 

There would be an in depth briefing later, specifically to piece together their story. The very fact that Darth Vader had had the opportunity to capture them all was something to be concerned about in of itself. There were a lot of questions and the council was far from happy but the briefing had to wait. 

Jyn was just glad they did not have to talk about it now and, for once, it was not her that was in trouble with the council. 

Despite all the drama the princess and her friends reported, Jyn and Cassian kept their heads low and went directly to med bay for their own check ups; Cassian for the tightness in his shoulders from his exerted effort in grabbing whatever he could hold onto to keep from falling to his death and Jyn for her blaster wound. They were released in less than an hour and eventually went their separate ways to resume their usual duties. 

The night after they got back from Nar Shaddaa, Jyn was kept awake late into the sleeping hours. She had gotten comfortable; wearing only a long, baggy shirt meant for a man a foot taller than her and twice her size, no pants, and her hair already pulled out from her bun. All the holopads were out on her mattress while she sat at the head of the bed, the blankets and pillows rumpled under her butt, with her feet tucked under her thighs and her back reclined against the headboard as she read one of the holopad’s contents. 

A trill at the door indicated someone was requesting to enter and she looked up at it for a moment before she unfolded her legs and walked up to the door, her bare feet slapping against the cold, hard floor. She swiped her right hand over the pad to open the door while she tucked her hair behind her ear with her left and was somewhat surprised to see Cassian standing in front of her, his upper body almost hunched in on himself, his head bowed slightly but chin jutted outward. His gaze was dark but hopeful as he looked at her, so, for a moment she thought there was a problem but he was not dressed for business. He was in loose-fitting, sleep pants and his shirt was mostly unbuttoned, slack around his midsection rather than tucked in. The dark circles under his eyes and the way his hair flopped into his eyes did her in and, without needing to know why he had come to her past midnight, she stepped out of the way, allowing him to enter. 

He nearly fell over the threshold and she closed the door behind him and turned to see that he had stopped in the middle of the room and was looking to her bed where she had a scattered mess of holopads spanning the entire width and just short of the entire length of the mattress. 

“Oh, sorry about the mess,” she started and rushed over to collect all the pads and gathered them into a pile. Once the bed was cleared, she set the pads in a stack on her nightstand and pivoted on her heel to face him again -- the look he leveled her with stole her breath away, her excuse caught in her throat. 

She knew that, by now, the evidence of her fight on Nar Shaddaa would have blossomed into colorful bruises; her right eye black and blue, her left cheekbone a splotch of red with pale coloring in the center where the swelling was the worst, and her knuckles purple, one of them scabbed over. So, his look of combined distress and disapproval was expected but there was something else in his eyes that took her aback: like she was the first sliver of light after being drowned in darkness for weeks.

Jyn did not move as he approached her, slow but oh so graceful and deliberate; like he was floating across the floor, as if this were all a dream. He stopped close enough that the toes of his unlaced boots were just one inch short of touching her bare toes so she had to throw her head back and he had to dip his chin almost to his chest for their gazes to meet. Then, slowly, he pulled his arms up and slid them between her sides and her arms to wrap around her waist while he brought his head down so his face was pressed into her shoulder. The timidness of his movements, a man she associated with strength and an unflinching will, had her heart swelling, touched by his tenderness and vulnerability. There was hardly a second between his embrace and her bringing her arms up around his shoulders to return the hug, her left hand pressed between his shoulder blades and right hand going to the back of his head, her fingers tangled in his dark hair, to keep him there; wordlessly telling him this was more than okay and that she would hold him forever if that’s what he needed. Her eyes burned with the emotion flooding her senses and filling her heart with affection. She closed her eyes as she angled her face to press her nose against his neck and breathed in. 

They stayed like that, holding one another at the side of her bed, like this was all they had. All they needed. 

Eventually, perhaps minutes later, she pulled back, just enough to have him lift his head to meet her gaze, their hands staying exactly where they were except her right hand which rested at the side of his neck, her thumb brushing near the pulse point. “Stay with me,” she said simply and, unlike before their trip to the smuggler’s moon, he nodded as they moved in unison to the mattress and got on top of the covers to face one another in bed; Cassian with his back to the massive window and Jyn with her back to the door. 

Their positions nearly mirrored one another; both of them with one arm pillowed between their heads and the bed, their free hand touching one another, his on her right hip and her right hand touching his chest, over his sternum. Their gazes were locked until something seemed to catch Cassian’s eye and he looked down the length of her body to her right thigh, her sleep shirt had rucked up on her leg to reveal a white bandage around where she had been shot the day before. She watched as his jaw became more defined when he clenched his teeth and she tried to distract him by scooting closer to him. It worked: he lifted his gaze back to her eyes and she smiled briefly.

“Tell me,” she said but it was really asking him to explain what was bothering him, requesting him to talk to her. 

He inhaled sharply through his nose and shook his head. “I just… needed to see you.”

She smiled again but it was dimmer than it had been before, Jyn knew it looked more sad than anything else. If he didn’t want to talk she understood but she would do anything to bring a smile to his face, to alleviate the worries so etched in the creases around his mouth, between his eyebrows, around his eyes. Jyn lifted her right hand from his chest and brushed her thumb along the lines of his bottom lip, to the corner of his mouth. She had felt him smile once, against her neck after the attack on Hoth, had heard him smile after the threat was gone on Nar Shaddaa but she had never truly seen him smile aside from a bittersweet one as they limped away from the tower on Scarif. 

“Well, I’m here,” she finally replied and his eyes tightened with a smile but she didn’t feel anything under her thumb, so she dropped it back down to rest on the mattress, between their chests. “What’s your favorite animal?”

Just as she intended, her question took him by surprise and he blinked but didn’t pull away or make a disapproving sound. He seemed thoughtful for a moment then said, “Kath Hound… or maybe a Rancor. The latter from a distance, of course.”

Jyn grinned and nodded. He could tell what she was doing and was playing along willingly and that made her toes curl, a warmth spreading through her entire body. They talked about silly things like animals, colors, favorite planets or cities, and teased about their next game of pazaak; who would win and whether or not Cassian was a cheater. The light-heartedness lasted into the next hour and slowly shifted to something much deeper, more personal. 

“That was the first -- and only -- time I had ever been captured,” he shared, referring to their first mission together, on Jedha. “I hated the feeling of being caged but worse was how helpless it made me. I didn’t even know if you were okay…”

She pulled her lips between her teeth and bit down for a moment but didn’t have a chance to respond before his free hand, not under his head, rested over hers where it rested between them. 

“I felt the same way yesterday,” he added. 

The reminder brought a flash memory of seeing his feet lifting off the ground, going head first over the edge of the platform, free falling into what she thought was certain death. She closed her eyes against the image and shook her head to try to shake loose the despair. 

"I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then she promised him that she was here, emphasized that they both were, and he could rest. “Sleep,” she invited and he nodded but kept staring at her, his hand gripping hers. Eventually his eyes fluttered shut, the silence between them comfortable and their touch as supportive as they both needed the other to be, and soon they both slept deeper than they had in years. Maybe in their whole life. 

When she opened her eyes the next morning, she expected him to be gone; left early in the morning to avoid any awkwardness or maybe it was all just a dream to begin with but instead she was greeted with his face in front of hers. His eyes were already open, watching her, but it didn’t unsettle her, iInstead he made her feel secure, cared for. 

She smiled and whispered good morning. 

His eyes smiled and he returned the greeting, his voice just as soft. 

The next day they didn’t have any meetings together and Cassian was busy putting together a squad to follow up on the lead the data chip provided but they passed one another in the hall. Cassian was surrounded by the other generals and Mon Mothma, he was in the middle of saying something to the general to his right but he caught her gaze and casted her a meaningful look. The warmth from the night before flushed against her skin and she mirrored him as she continued the opposite way down the corridor. 

There were just as many rumors about her and Cassian as there were about Leia and Han, who were still MIA, but that didn't change how much time she and the Major spent together when they had the opportunity. Today they sat in his room, at the round table in the corner of his room, next to the picturesque window, cleaning their blasters. Most of the time they sat in comfortable silence, just the hum of the ship, their own breathing, and the sound of their cleaning tools rubbing against the metal of the gun filling the space between them. During this time she snuck glances at him, her eyes followed the angles and contours of his face; his strong jaw lined with his beard, straight nose, curved lips, the way his hair laid against his forehead. She looked back at her blaster anytime he set a tool down to reach for another, missing the way he would look at her for an extended moment before returning to his work. 

After he pinched his finger in one of the slides of the blaster and cursed in his native language, Jyn asked him to teach her Festian, at least some things. One corner of his mouth lifted up and he tilted his head as he regarded her while sucking on the pad of his offended finger. When he pulled his hand away from his face he swallowed and asked, “what do you want to know?”

She shrugged. 

“Creo que eres maravillosa,” he said and leaned forward over his work, his chest pressed against the edge of the table. His voice was soft but his gaze fierce with conviction and it made her shudder, something pleasant flipping in her chest, just hearing his warm tone.

When he didn’t translate, she raised her eyebrows in expectation. His silence and ambiguity continued so she sighed and set her gun down on the table. “Yeah, what does that mean?”

“Nothing. What do you want to know how to say?”

“Pfft!” She waved her hand at him dismissively. “I’ll just look it up,” she said in reference to what he had already said to her. “How about, ‘you’re a jerk’,” she suggested and jutted her chin out as she raised her eyebrows.

His look of amusement was not lost on her and it kept a smug smile on her lips as she waited for him to respond. 

“Eres un idiota.”

“Eres un idiota,” she echoed as best she could but failed at rolling her ‘r’ in the same way he had. He nodded nonetheless and she said it again but this time with the cadence of a statement. 

He nodded again and said, “si” in agreement. 

His tone had been in that of a statement, unmistakable, so, Jyn knew it was not a question. She waited and arched her brow.

Cassian smiled, it was closed lipped but the very sight of it had her stomach flipping and there was a rush in her brain that made her blink out of dizziness. “‘Si’ means ‘yes’,” he explained and she smiled in response. 

“Got it.”

O.o.O.o

It became a regular occurrence, the two of them going to one another’s room for a moment of quiet, privacy, with one another. More regular was to go to the other on a bad night of insomnia and spend the night in one another’s bed, most times without saying a word; they didn’t need to. Other nights talking was needed, for a distraction. On those nights, sometimes, they would sit at the table and tinker with something or play a few rounds of pazaak.

Days passed, weeks, like this and finally she thought to look up the statement he had said to her in Festian and when it was translated for her her lower lip quivered. It was a delight to hear and her heart overflowed with an emotion she hadn’t felt in years, since she was a child living on Lah’mu. An emotion that scared her more than anything else. She left the comm room and walked back to her room in a daze, barely moving out of the way in time to avoid colliding with other people walking the other way. A decision settled in her mind and snapped her out of it as she picked up her pace and became more alert as she moved between others, passing people walking slower than her. 

_I think you’re wonderful._

It wasn’t anything special to others, perhaps, a compliment if anything. To Jyn it was personal, intimate, if only because she had heard the original tone it was said in.

She got into her room and immediately rushed to the closet, slamming her palm against the reader to have the door slide open with a woosh. Jyn bent and scooped up her bag, her bangs -- which she had cut recently to sit straight against her forehead, the length just under her eyebrows when her face was relaxed -- shifted against her brow and then she stood up abruptly, causing her hair, now normally let half up and half down rather than in a bun every day, bounced around her shoulders and flipped when she spun on her heels. She threw her bag on the bed and started to pack. 

Jyn shoved her clothes in, a couple holographs, and started for amenities when she realized how long it had taken her to do that much. Years ago, maybe even one, it would have taken her less than five minutes to pack everything and it would all fit into the very bag she had packed on her bed. However, she had been packing for ten and the bag was already so full it would be almost impossible to zip it back up. 

Her chest heaving and chin wrinkled from pushing her lower lip into her upper one, she looked around her room and a calm washed over her. 

Cassian’s blue jacket was draped over the back of her chair and his gun, he was in the process of fixing, on the table. To the right side of the bed, on Cassian’s side of their bed, on the nightstand was a glass, half full of water from when he got thirsty in the middle of the night last night. If she walked into the refresher attached to her room, she would find two toothbrushes and his beard trimmer. He was there to stay, she was safe here. 

She remembered when he first said the word ‘home’ to her, right before Scarif; remembered how he had insisted that ‘home’ wasn’t a place but who she was with, back on Hoth. As she looked around her room -- their room, over the last few weeks -- she was flooded with relief and a clear sense of belonging. 

The feeling she felt at hearing his words translated back to her that had bloomed in her chest was something _good_ and the fear it had been initially paired with was the panic that it could all end. It could be taken from her, not because Cassian would walk away from her like so many had when she had run with Saw and his group, but just like her parents had, just as Rogue One had. It didn’t matter whether Cassian left her voluntarily or involuntarily, it would hurt just as much either way, but he had proven to do everything he could to get back to her and she knew she would do exactly the same. The fear was real but like one ‘fears’ the force, it’s a respect. 

Her love for him was a duty to protect what they had built. 

Finally, the tension left her body and she huffed out her nose and closed her eyes. She bowed her head and subtly shook it before she walked back towards her bag and started to unpack again, taking extra care to make sure it looked like she had never had this panic or intention of leaving. Jyn shoved her bag to the very back of the closet, once it had been emptied, and closed the closet door again just as the main door opened and Cassian stepped through. 

“There you are,” he said and held the door open as he beckoned her to come with him with a wave of his hand. “We have a meeting.” 

She smiled and took a steadying breath, released it as a subtle sigh of contentment, as she stepped towards him so they could report to Mon Mothma together.

O.o.O.o

Leia, Han, Luke, and Chewie finally all reported back from their hiatus; a rescue mission for the Captain who had been captured by a bounty hunter and turned into Jabba the Hutt a year prior. That same day they finally got word back from the bothan team that Cassian had assembled, a transmission sent with the location of the new Death Star and intel that they had a shield protecting it from the forest moon of Endor. Cassian received the transmission and relayed it to the other generals as well as the news that the team did not survive the mission, no survivors. Mon Mothma nodded her understanding and thanked him for helping to put it all together before dismissing him which he gladly took and walked away to go straight towards Jyn’s room.

He opened the door without knocking or ringing in. It was late at night and she was already in bed, on the left side, under the covers. Jyn looked up from what she was reading but the moment she saw his expression she turned off the holopad and set it on the nightstand to her left and sat up straighter in bed, reclined against the pillows. 

“What’s wrong,” she asked, her eyebrows lifted in worry and eyes narrowed. 

Cassian walked over to their bed, pulling off his jacket and unbuttoning the top three buttons of his shirt as he did, and sat down on the edge of the mattress. He tossed his jacket to the foot of the bed and bent over to pull off his boots, unable to find the words to explain what was wrong he bided his time in his actions. All the while, Jyn was silent and patient, not moving from her spot to wait and see what he wanted, needed. He was grateful and as soon as he could, he leaned back and turned onto his right side; his head pillowed in her lap and his nose pressed against her belly. Still she said nothing but he felt her hands go to him: her right hand to trace her blunt nails up and down his bicep while her left hand went to his head, fingers pushing through his hair and fingertips massaging his scalp. 

His whole body relaxed under her touch and he released a sigh through his nose as he brought his arms to wrap around her and pull himself closer, his eyes closed. 

“Cassian,” she finally said, her tone concerned more than inquiring. 

“They didn’t make it,” he replied. “The whole team died getting us the location of the new Death Star.” 

He felt and heard her slow exhale of understanding and regret. “I’m sorry.” 

“They wanted to promote me to General.”

“What did you say?” She did not bother asking why, it didn’t matter, and he appreciated that she recognized that. 

He hesitated and shrugged his shoulders. “That I didn’t want it.”

Jyn was looking down at him now, staring at his profile, he could feel her gaze. “Why not?”

“They stand there, looking at screens, and make decisions they don’t fully understand,” he replied bitterly, thinking about all the half-cocked orders he had received over the last two decades; assassinations, airstrikes, etc. 

“You could make a difference,” she stated.

“Maybe but… if I did take it, what--” he sighed and finally looked up at her, his head rolling on her thighs. “What if I _became_ them because I wasn’t the one in the field, making those calls because I could see what’s happening? I can’t hold that many lives in my hands and order them to do something I might not fully understand. Look what happened today...”

At that moment he realized that was exactly what he did; he gathered a team and ordered them to follow a lead that they started, ordered them to their deaths. He was the one who sent the bothans out. Already he was no better than those he feared to become by taking the promotion. 

She fell silent, considering. "I don’t think you could become that person." She lifted her right hand from his bicep to brush his cheek with the back of her fingers. “You’re not them...” Then Jyn leaned her face slightly over him, curling her upper body around his head. “Not now and not ever,” she added, reading his mind. 

Cassian huffed a half laugh but it was humorless as he hid his face against her belly again.

“I would give-’” he paused and shook his head against her lap, his nose incidentally nuzzling against her stomach, “- almost anything to make this war end.” 

“I know,” she replied, continuing to stroke his hair and arm. “What can I do?”

“This.”

Jyn did not respond but her hands stilled for a moment to wrap around him in a protective embrace, squeezing gently in a hug to reassure him, comfort him. After she resumed her gentle caresses, she spoke up again and her words made his breathing hitch for a moment before he looked up at her, trying to decipher if she knew what she was saying, “Creo que eres maravillosa.” 

When she looked back down at him, a hesitant smile on her lips but a twinkle in her eye, he knew that she meant what she was saying. She was just nervous about how it would be received and whether she pronounced it correctly. 

He smiled at her in return. “Likewise.”

Eventually, he readjusted so they were laying with one another, flush from chest to toe, his head tucked under her chin, as she laid on her back, slightly angled into him and he laid partially on top of her, on his belly with his arms wrapped around her slender waist, and their legs intertwined under the blanket. Now her fingers on her left hand combed through his hair, starting by brushing his hair back from his forehead and up through the top of his scalp and to the side of his head while her right hand rubbed his back. 

They had been silent for some time, he was drifting to sleep -- his breathing soft and even which he would later realize was why Jyn whispered her admission, believing him to be unconscious -- when Jyn whispered: “I love you.” 

Cassian tightened his arms around her briefly in response, nuzzling his face against her collarbone, and was asleep moments later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments appreciated!


	5. Endor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not beta read, blah blah blah
> 
> I don't own star wars or their characters.

“So, you still got a promotion,” Jyn said while they were gearing up in her bedroom, preparing for the drop onto Endor. 

“I didn’t want it,” he responded and started to lace up his boots, sitting in the chair in the corner of the room. “Colonel…” he scoffed. 

“Well, I like the way it sounds.” She approached him as she pulled her hair into a bun at the back of her head, her bangs still out and fringed around her forehead, a couple of the longer strands of hair escaped her fingers and hung around her temple. “Better than ‘ _Major_ Pain in My Ass’.”

His eyes widened as he looked up from his boot, still hunched over his knees, and met her gaze with an amused look in his eyes. She smirked and watched as he stood up just as she dropped her hands from her hair back to sides. As he stepped closer he never broke eye contact and the directness, the intensity of his gaze, made her stomach flutter. Unable to keep the corners of her lips from curving upward she worked her jaw and lifted her chin to look up at him when he stood directly in front of her. 

“And what about you, _Captain_ , how do you feel about your promotion?”

“It’s better than being a General,” she responded, agreeing to his notion the night before. 

Both Skywalker and Solo had been instantly ranked up to General, skipping over several people that would be considered more qualified and going against every tradition in the military but who was she to complain if she had been offered, but ultimately turned down, the opportunity. Rather than be offended on Cassian’s behalf as she had been when Skywalker and Solo got medals while all Cassian got for his efforts in striking against the empire was spinal surgery, she was accepting this time. Cassian didn’t want to be General, he wanted to be down in the trenches with the troops, planetside, not just today but until he was confident that he could do it without letting down his people. 

This strike might win them the war but they all knew the fight would be far from over. 

Cassian lifted his hand to hold her chin like he so often did and leaned down, his dark eyes holding her gaze with an intensity that left her frozen but, when his eyes closed, she held her breath as she watched him close the distance between their lips. When his mouth touched hers, she closed her eyes and pressed her lips against him harder. His hand moved from her chin to the nape of her neck, his thumb brushing against her ear, near her tragus, while her hands clutched at the front of his camouflage poncho. Just as their lips were moving against one another, deepening the kiss so they were slotted together, a pounding on the door reberated through the room. 

Their contact broke and Jyn remembered to exhale again. 

The look in Cassian’s eyes was a conflicting mix of bliss and absolute fury. 

“Colonel Andor, are you in there? Captain Erso?” A voice called from the otherside a moment before the door hissed and swished open to reveal one of the Pathfinder’s assigned to the ground team they were leading rather than Generals Skywalker and Solo. “Oh good,” he said and sighed in relief, his knees bending slightly. “Just making sure about what we’re doing when we…” 

The Pathfinder kept talking and Cassian very slowly started to walk towards the door, like a Kath stalking prey; so agile and silent -- not even the sound of his footsteps could be heard, the very realization made her shudder in combined fear and pleasure. Jyn could imagine the look on Cassian’s face and how intimidating he must look right now but she was too stunned and fuzzy to think too much about it. 

Her lips were still tingling, wet. If she flicked her tongue out over her bottom lip she was certain it would taste like him and that made something stir in the pit of her stomach. For the first time in her life, her body felt weak for a reason entirely different than exhaustion or trauma.

“Yes, thank you _very_ much,” Cassian said facetiously. “You’re dismissed, we’ll see you on the drop ship.” He swiped his hand over the door control and the white, sliding door nearly hit the Pathfinder’s nose on the way shut, the kid’s finger held in the air and mouth open to add something but it was too late. 

He turned back to her and she turned her head to look back at him but her feet had yet to move and were still pointing at the foot of the bed. They were silent, neither knowing what to say or if anything needed to be said. All Jyn knew was that she wanted nothing more than to rip off all the armor and camo he had already donned back off and show him what he meant to her. 

There was a dark look in his eyes now and the warm fuzziness she had been feeling washed away like cold water over her skin. He moved towards her again and she pivoted to face him directly so when he reached her they would be chest to chest. His grip on her biceps was tight enough that she did not dare move or speak until he was ready. She looked up at him, her heart in her throat and studied his expression but he was hiding behind the mask so well that even with all her years of knowing him, falling in love with him, she didn’t know what she was seeing, what he was thinking. 

His nostrils flared for a moment, his lower lip pushed against his upper lip as he shook his head minutely. “Jyn, I need…” He huffed sharply out his nose and ducked his head to rest his forehead against her bangs and finally she saw the crack in his mask as his eyebrows furrowed deeply together, his eyes pinched tight, closed. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” he said breathlessly.

Her whole body sagged.

She had been expecting him to say that he ‘couldn’t do this’ or that they couldn’t be together -- that he regretted what they had just done. Instead, he was despairing over this battle, over her well-being. Her heart beat for him.

“Cassian, this mission is hardly the worst we’ve gone into. We survived Scarif and Hoth… and everything in between. We can get through this. It’s one little outpost,” she assured but there was something in the way he gripped her harder, pressed his forehead against hers more, that told her there was more that he knew about that she didn’t. 

“Just promise,” he pleaded.

Jyn lifted her hands to cup both sides of his face, pulling him away to force his gaze to meet hers. “I promise.” 

His lips turned further down as he nodded and, to try to wipe the scowl away, she stood on her toes and pressed her lips against his again. A kiss he returned eagerly.

O.o.O.o

It was all a trap, an ambush. If not for a misadventure the famous trio had gotten into the night before while he and Jyn had stayed at camp with their team and the other pathfinders, they would have been far more outnumbered. Even with the help of the ewoks they were being slaughtered, just outside their goal by stormtroopers and AT-STs. If he looked over his shoulder he knew that he would see Han and Leia trying to hotwire the door to the outpost and if he looked to his left he would see Jyn hiding behind one of the massive trees, keeping the pressure on the stormtroopers. Despite their efforts, it seemed hopeless; endless reinforcements came for the imperial army but the rebels would not be sending anyone -- the fleet had their own ambush to deal with. 

One of the traps set by the ewoks did not disable an incoming AT-ST and Cassian’s heart dropped, that would put Jyn directly in their path. 

“Jyn,” he shouted and looked up from his cover, behind a fallen tree that was covered in ferns and moss. Some of the ground troops saw him and turned to fire at him and he was forced to duck again. When there was a break in the cover fire, Cassian popped back up and returned fire at them just in time to see the AT-ST fire on the tree Jyn was seeking cover behind. It splintered into pieces at the base and started to fall but at the last second, just before he was about to call for her again, he saw her sprint and dive out of the way. 

He was forced behind cover again but peeked over just enough to see her running for new cover. However, the AT-ST recovered faster than she could hide and fired on her again, the resulting explosion of another tree sent her flying from the concussion. Instinctively, Cassian shifted his posture to go to her but there were more stormtroopers coming. He held still for a moment, his shoulder pressed against the bark of the fallen tree as he looked around for an opening, a clear path to Jyn. He could hear the whooping calls of distress and screams of ewoks all around him and somewhere behind him Artoo was screeching from malfunction. It seemed the battle had turned against them, defeat was inevitable. 

Then, hearing a rallying call, Cassian looked to the sky to see that the AT-ST that fired on Jyn, was being overtaken by Chewie and two other ewoks and Cassian used the inspiring act as motivation to finish off the stormtroopers in his way so he could get to Jyn. With the walker now being used for them rather than against them, the tide of battle instantly improved and soon they had the advantage. 

Just as he was about to go to Jyn, the immediate threat eliminated, Han called him over the comm; “hey, get over here, we’ve got an idea!”

Cassian had every instinct to ignore Han in favor of finding Jyn but this was the final piece of the battle. They needed to get the shield down in order to destroy the weapon. He grabbed his comm out of his breast pocket with rigid motions and gripped it firm in his fist as he replied, “what do you need me for?”

“Will ya just get over here?!”

He cursed and stared at the last place he had seen Jyn and clenched his jaw before he pocketed the comm and hurdled over the log; putting more distance between himself and the bunker, towards Jyn. Han's voice didn't come over his comm again but Cassian had every reason to believe that the man had put two and two together. He would pull it off without him, he had a whole team of Pathfinders to support his plan. 

As he sprinted into the trees and brush, a wounded stormtrooper started to get up and held their blaster out but Cassian fired one shot into the front of their helmet and ended any ideas the stormtrooper may have had. He leapt over some logs and stomped through grass and flora until finally he got to the fallen tree that he had last seen Jyn behind. 

“Jyn!”

Cassian looked around for any sign of movement, listened for any sound that wasn’t the celebration near the bunker or the everyday sound of fauna in the forest. He kept walking, trying to follow the broken twigs and crushed leaves as signs of where Jyn might have landed while calling her name. 

It felt like an agonizing time later, with no response from Jyn whatsoever, when he finally found her half buried under dirt and ferns. He rushed over to her, his hair in his eyes and sweat dripping down his face, and knelt at her side as he looked her over with his heart in his throat. The instinct to touch her was overwhelming but he didn't know where she was hurt or how bad, he didn't know where to start. His hands hovered over her back, her head, then her arms, and returned to her back while he tried to stop trembling; he was useless in his urgency to help. 

She was laying on her stomach, her head facing to her left shoulder, cheeks smooshed from the buckle of her helmet that was skewed now, her arms spread out in front of her and legs sprawled so one leg was entirely outstretched and the other bent at the knee slightly. If he did not know better, she looked exactly how she did when she slept. 

“Jyn,” he whispered and shifted his position to her left side by high-crawling over her, careful not to touch her yet. Cassian finally fussed over whether or not to remove her helmet, his right hand clenching and unclenching into a fist before he finally, a little aggressively, pressed his fingertips to her neck, feeling for a pulse. He waited, held his breath and closed his eyes, praying that The Force spare her life. 

When he finally found it, he released a harsh huff and finally committed to removing her helmet and pulled her up into his arms. He turned her onto her side first, got his knees under her, then lifted her further until her neck was supported by the crook of his left arm and back supported by his thighs. Cassian caressed her cheek with the backs of his dirty fingers. “Jyn, please…” His voice sounded weak, tiny even to his own ears.

Her eyelids fluttered and his breathing hitched as he looked at her face expectantly, searching for her gaze. She groaned and shifted in his arms before finally her eyes opened all the way and she focused on him. 

“Hey,” he managed and offered a tight smile. 

She furrowed her brow and shook her head slightly. “Who- who are you,” she asked, her eyes flicking across his features rapidly. 

His heart sank and his attempted smile fell instantly as he blinked at her. Cassian opened his mouth to try to say something, anything, but he didn’t know what to say; she didn’t recognize him. 

Then, her eyes crinkled at the corners and her body shuddered with a partial laugh. 

Cassian’s eyes widened and choked on his own voice. “You-- _Jyn_ , that’s not funny. You’re not funny." 

“Was it that bad,” she asked and he could see guilt cross through her features. 

He swallowed hard. “Can you move your legs,” he asked and looked away from her face to watch. 

Immediately, she moved her feet around in a little dance and when he looked back at her, she started to sit up and slid out of his lap. Jyn curled her legs under herself until she was kneeling with him, then her hands went to his jaw and she kissed him deeply, urgently. 

Somewhere above them the second Death Star was reduced to stardust but he was too focused on her, warm and solid -- alive. He turned his head slightly, deepening the kiss further which she took as an open invitation to do just that until she essentially stole his breath away and he broke away but only enough that their lips no longer touched, their noses still nuzzled against one another. 

“I should be mad at you,” he chastised and her response was to purse her lips just enough to touch them to the corner of his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding sincere. Then she looked behind them where they could hear cheering and they looked up at the sky, where the Death Star had been looming over them, and found that the sky was empty. "Is it over?”

He inhaled sharply through his nose, a partial sniffle and nodded against her as he touched his forehead to hers. “Yes,” he replied and started to wrap his arms around her, near the small of her back but when he encircled her she flinched and arched her back away from his touch

“Ah,” she hissed and he froze but she only leaned further into his chest. He had dropped his arms back down to his sides, afraid to touch her to cause more pain but she nuzzled his neck and pressed an idle kiss to his skin. “I’m sorry… I didn’t realize how sore I was there.” 

Cassian was unsure of what to do, frozen in place. 

“Cass, it’s okay,” she breathed and wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to encourage him to try again as she crawled back into his lap so their chests were flush against one another, her knees squeezing his thighs. "We won."

Slowly, he lifted his hands and rested them at her waist and she nodded against the side of his head. Cassian closed his eyes and pressed his cheek against hers. 

“This better be the last time we have to do this,” she stated and he huffed a bitter laugh with her.

O.o.O.o

The celebration on Endor stretched for miles throughout the treetop city, each main injunction had a massive bonfire that the soldiers and ewoks danced around together. Many of the pilots had landed nearby to celebrate as well, enjoying one another’s company and simply existing. Some of the ewoks had gathered helmets from stormtroopers and happily banged on the tops like drums, it was primal but just so cathartic. Jyn had a few drinks in her within the last couple of hours and was moving about like she had no pain in her lower back, her hands in Cassian’s as she skipped backwards in a wide circle around the fire and he chased after her, amused and sharing in the excitement and relief. It was the first time a won battle influenced her so positively. 

Their last victory had been more about the honoring of those they had led into battle and wondering why they survived when so many, worthy others did not. This time it was about the win itself, about the end of a war. 

Although most of the intel had been wrong, one thing was for certain; the emperor had been on the Death Star when it exploded and Darth Vader was currently burning on a pyre not too far away. With the leaders gone, the rest of the Empire was as good as a headless snake; writhing and shriveling but soon it would be dead. The galaxy at peace. 

If the lives of those lost throughout the war meant anything it was for the moment they were experiencing right now. 

They danced, sometimes fast with the tempo and others as they all held hands and spun in a circle but once or twice it was just the two of them holding one another and swaying. Jyn still had smudges of dirt on her face, her bangs were matted and sideswept over her brow and Cassian’s fingers were as filthy as the rest of him, under his nails black with dirt and dried blood. Many of the other pathfinders looked similar but every one of them had a smile on their face as they shared looks and exchanged hugs or handshakes.

At one point, Cassian had to pull Jyn away from Han, Luke, and Leia. The spy he loved had thrown her arms around Leia and Luke’s necks and beckoned Han to come close while she drunkenly explained that she did not hate them, per se, but that she was annoyed with their methods. 

"It’s nothing against you personally,” she defended, her voice much louder than anyone, including Cassian, had ever heard her before. “It’s-- I know you were doing your best--! I just… so… that’s why I, y’know…” Jyn waved her hand in the air, nearly smacking Luke in the face, as she tried to find the right words. “I mean, you _get it_ , right? How it’s not exactly _fair_... wha- Cass! I was talking!” She protested when he grabbed her around her waist and extracted her from their presence. 

“She mixed her painkillers with the ewoks’ moonshine,” he muttered to them while shoving her in the opposite direction and she continued to try to explain that she liked them even though she didn’t act like it. 

After he took the drink away from her and replaced it with a canteen of water, she relaxed and they sat on one of the benches near the fire and watched the festivities with the thoughtfulness of people thrice their age; weighing the cost of all the people, an entire planet lost, the magnitude of the war, the hatred that fueled it, but the love that somehow found its way. When Cassian looked back at Jyn, he was not surprised to find that she was already gazing at her; her eyes reflecting the flames but lit up with joy, soft with fondness. 

By the time they got back to the freighter, back to their room, Jyn was no longer drunk and actually had a second, maybe her third, boost of energy for the night. “I need a shower,” she whined and he huffed a laugh, agreeing, but she turned to look at him immediately after and he froze halfway through pulling his jacket off, the poncho already in a pile by the nightstand.

“What,” he asked and looked back at her, his eyes glancing about the room as if to search for what could have startled her so; clueless. Cassian pulled his jacket all the way off. 

She offered a half smile and shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing.”

Cassian watched her, waiting for her to actually explain her sudden expression of interest but instead she started to strip, however, she did not get very far along in removing her stained clothing. 

While lifting her arm to pull it through her sleeve, she winced and sucked air between her teeth. He rushed towards her and grabbed the end of her sleeve in one hand and supported her arm in his other. Together they got her shirt off, revealing an array of bruises along her arms, shoulders, and chest but, for the first time, he saw many scars that he had never seen before. 

During their short time in sharing a bed together, Cassian had seen Jyn in a sleeveless shirt, so, the scars on her arms were already noticed and some of their stories discussed but nothing of those that marked her chest. Many of them were familiar if only because he had similar ones on his own body, which only made it more difficult for him to see because he knew what it felt like to receive those marks. 

She was topless, standing before him in only her breastband, but she was also injured. Though his eyes followed the curves of her body, his weight shifting from one foot to the other and back again, they stood like this because of the pain she was in - because she needed help -- which kept away any thoughts of this being anything intimate at bay. 

His gaze must have lingered too long, however, because her hands had moved to the hem of his shirt and lifted a little. 

He brought his gaze up again, first to her eyes then to her hands pulling at his shirt and finally back to meet her gaze, which was twinkling with playfulness. “I showed you mine…” 

Without so much as a word, Cassian reached behind his head and pulled at the back of his shirt; his head popped out first and as he brought his shirt forward and off. Her eyes, much like his own earlier, seemed to be studying his chest and what scars were there like a map of the stars. Then her right hand lifted to brush her fingertips over a raised, white scar against his left pectoral, near his heart. 

“Vibroblade,” she asked, although rhetorical, he still nodded while continuing to watch her expression. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

Finally she lifted her gaze back to his, and the power and meaning behind her look gave him goosebumps. When her hands went to both of his as she started to walk backwards, toward the refresher, he followed without a second thought. The door opened behind them and she stopped just in front of the stall to turn the water on blindly, never breaking eye contact as she tilted her head to regard him; asking him a silent question that he understood perfectly. 

A subtle nod was all she needed and her hands went to her breastband to remove it. As she did, he unbuttoned his pants and together they stripped all the way down and stood before one another. Nothing about it was sexual, it was almost spiritual in nature; bared to one another, no barriers and nothing to hide behind. She sidestepped into the stall, under the stream of water, and he joined her, only one step behind. 

Dirt and blood washed off her in waves, swirling down the drain in a stream of red and brown. Jyn tilted her head back so the water bounced off her face for a moment and a subtle smile curved her lips before her hands went to him and pulled them flush together so they were both under the waterfall. His startled sound brought a laugh to her lips and any tension left in his body, the lingering uncertainty, dissipated instantly. The sound of her voice, so carefree in such a positive sound, made his stomach flip and his heart race faster from the thrill: he would do anything to hear that again. 

After the initial rinse, Cassian had turned Jyn around to face the other way, her back to his front, and grabbed the hair cleaner. He lathered it into his palms before he brought it to her head and massaged it into her scalp. Jyn leaned into his touch like a cat, her head tilting into his dominant hand and he smiled. For a moment he kept going but then paused as he leaned his head closer to her left ear, his chin hovering just above her shoulder, and whispered: “I love you.” 

She didn’t move and neither did he, just the sound of the water hitting off his bare back and back onto the white floor at their feet. Then she turned to face him, her hair a tangled mess from his washing her hair, her bangs vanished into the rest of her hair, tinted in white -- her face was flushed but clean of dirt and blood -- and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life. Jyn always had been. He looked back down at her while she raised green eyes to meet his and he sucked on the inside of his lower lip, peering at her under his hair that was plastered to his forehead and down the bridge of his nose. 

“I love you,” she echoed, her voice barely louder than the stream of water. 

They barely remembered to rinse the cleaner out of her hair before they stumbled out of the refresher. Jyn held his face between her hands, her lips pressed and moving against his while he tried to keep up with her pace as he blindly reached his hand behind him to shut the water off. 

Then they were out the door, his hands shifting to rest on her hips while she walked them towards the bed. Jyn stumbled on their discarded clothes but got her feet back under her and finished the last two, backwards steps to the edge of their bed. She hurriedly fell back onto the bed and pulled him with her, her one hand entangled at the back of his head in his sopping wet hair, and he angled to land so he would have one arm braced to the side of her shoulder and one of his legs slotted between both of hers. Their kiss broke only for a moment so they wouldn’t clash their teeth together but once they were settled in the middle of the mattress, she craned her neck up and resumed their passionate kissing, their hands fumbling for purchase on one another. 

“Wai-” he mumbled against her lips but she did not relent, holding him in place with her hand at the back of his neck and the other already moving down the length of his chest, lower. “Wait…” he said, amused as he huffed a laugh against her mouth and finally she broke the kiss.

“What,” she asked breathlessly and shook her head against the pillow, already soaked from her hair. 

He stared at her a moment, somber and feeling awkward about it, but ultimately he confessed, “It’s been almost five years.” 

Jyn pulled her lower lip between her teeth and bit down so her flesh was white and the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “Cassian…” she whispered and her hand finally moved to grip his length gently. “My love, are you… _sensitive_?”

Her tease elicited a growl from him, though not in anger, a warning. If she kept it up, he would not last.

“Tell me what you want.”

“You. I just,” he paused and dropped his face into the space between her neck and shoulder as she started to stroke him. “I…” 

“I know,” she hushed and pressed a kiss to the shell of his ear, turning to brush her nose against his hair. 

He lifted his head and grabbed her wrist, the one connected to her hand that was stimulating him, and pulled her hand back up and pinned it to the pillow beside her head. What he wanted was to please her and if she kept up what she was doing he might not make it to that point -- for five years he had thought about her, dreamed of this very moment. Only once had he had sex with someone since meeting Jyn, it was not long after he recovered from his surgery following Scarif and he had thought of Jyn the entire time. After that it didn’t feel right to try with anyone else. 

All he wanted was her.

So, he kept her hands away from his erection and started to kiss down her jaw, down her breast, and towards her stomach when she stopped him and forced his gaze back to her eyes with her free hand at his jaw. “No, I’m ready --"

He gazed at her thoughtfully, hesitating for less than a moment but she caught it immediately and her mouth pulled into a wide grin. 

“What,” he asked. 

“You’re pouting,” she replied with a short laugh -- his stomach flipped and a bloodrush went straight to the place he was trying to ignore right now. “... have you imagined this moment, Cass,” she asked her voice husky but there was no tease, just a sincere question. Again he didn’t so much as consider his next words and she was already reading his mind. “It’s okay… I have too.” 

With her permission conveyed, Cassian licked his lips and took his time with her: kissing and licking at her flesh until she was shuddering, writhing beneath him. By the time he was through with her, she was gasping, the sheets clutched in her fists as she shifted her body to follow his mouth, trembling under his hands against her thighs. The very sight of her had his own chest heaving, his breaths heavy against her skin following each kiss. 

“Cassian, please,” she begged and when their gazes met he was almost done in right there at how dilated they were, glassy with need. 

He gladly gave her what she wanted after he went back to hover his lips over hers, their eyes locked on one another and his still wet hair dripping on her forehead. As he steadied himself to slide in, he pressed his lips to hers again and her arms went around his shoulders. They moved together as if they had known each other's bodies and had planned in advance but, then again, so much of what they did together felt that way. 

The space between them was so little, only filled with their own shuddering breaths as they moved together, her fingers pressed against his shoulders and one of his arms wrapped under her neck and shoulders while the other arm was braced against the pillow beside her head. When she came; clenching her legs around his thighs, arms frozen around his neck, and back arched off the bed, he watched with wonder and adoration but he followed not long after. He had already been so close when she tightened around him and gave him such a sight to behold, pushing him right over the edge. 

Cassian collapsed on top of her, their chests pressed together with his face buried in her neck and her arms shifting to wrap around his head protectively. She held him while he still saw stars in his eyelids, his brain buzzing, and body entirely relaxed. When he finally thought to roll off of her, she shook her head and held him still. 

“Mm-mm…” she hummed in the back of her throat, discouraging his efforts. “Stay.” 

“Just going to give you room to breathe, Jyn…” 

“No… stay.” 

He chuckled, smiling against her skin, and relented to her stubborn will as he pressed a kiss to her collarbone and stayed exactly where he was. 

When he woke the next morning, he was facing the window, they had jumped to hyperdrive because the stars were rushing by them, Endor no longer in sight. He could feel Jyn’s fingers tracing a line down the length of his spine and he shivered at her touch. The blanket was draped at his hips, leaving his back entirely exposed to her and he knew that her focus was on the scar left behind from surgery even with the additional scars elsewhere that marred his skin, she would be more concerned with the one that she had known him for. The one that had come from one of their worst days, one that she still startled her awake in her nightmares; though she claimed they got less frequent after he started to stay with her. 

It was why they had started in the first place, so, of course he felt the same way. 

“Good morning,” he greeted and turned on to his back, forcing her to withdraw her hand. 

Jyn was lying on her side, her left arm tucked under the pillow under her head and the other now draped across her waist while facing him. “Good morning,” she smiled and he smiled back. Her smile grew instantly, flashing white teeth while her eyes lit up. His own spread in response, mirroring her look of delight and admiration. 

Her hair was wild from having not brushed it, her bangs sticking up in every direction -- though he knew that his likely looked the same -- and she had a scratch along her cheekbone he hadn’t noticed until now but she was absolutely stunning as she laid next to him. Jyn brought her hand back towards him, this time her thumb tracing the curve of his mouth and up to his cheek, under his left eye before she dropped it again. 

“I love you,” she said. 

“I love you,” he echoed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, one more chapter!
> 
> **What could happen? *dramatic gasp***
> 
> All kudos and comments are greatly appreciated <3 


	6. Coruscant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it pals, the last chapter... thing is though... my mind is running WILD with ideas and now it's a series. I have *counts fingers* at least four more, separate ideas to write and *whisper* _I'm already almost done with the second part._
> 
> Anyway -- thank you ALL for the support throughout writing this. You're all amazing.

“Are you serious,” Jyn shouted and stared at him. 

He looked at her and Jyn saw nothing; like he didn’t care about what was happening between them right now. 

“I can’t just walk away,” he finally responded, his arms spread out at his sides before he let them drop again. "The war may be over but there is still work to be done and I cannot just turn my back."

“Why not,” she asked and looked around aimlessly as she held her hands up in front of her chest. “None of them care about you, do you realize that? The war is over! _What_ are we still doing here?”

Cassian closed the distance so quickly between them, his eyes so hard with anger it startled her into taking a step back. “What do you propose we do, hm? I’ve been fighting this war for twenty five years, Jyn,” he argued, his body leaning towards her so he was looking down at her as he shook his head. “Where do you expect us to go, two spies, huh?”

“So, you’re going to work-- throw yourself in the line of fire -- until you die?”

"And what about you," he retorted. "All the times I worried you wouldn't come home?" 

"That's not what we're talking about!" 

"Isn't it?!" Then he leaned closer, his face inches from hers. “This is who I am,” he hissed, his voice just above a whisper. “If you can’t accept that--” he cut himself off but his eyes were still boring holes into hers and all the fight left her at once with a single exhale of realization. 

The moment her shoulders sagged however she tensed and curled her upper lip. “What, Cassian? If I can’t keep watching you go on these missions, coming back exhausted and beaten… what, I should leave?”

“I didn’t say that,” he thundered and pointed a finger in her face. “Why is your first solution to everything to run away,” he added, softer now, and turned away from her, running his fingers through his hair. 

Her mouth dropped open but only for a moment before she clenched her jaw and shook her head. “Nearly six years now and you still think I’m going to run?” 

He turned to face her again, his hands on his hips, and opened his mouth to say something but she was connecting the dots and spoke for him.

“You still don’t trust me.” 

“Jyn-”

“No. Just… get out.” 

“What,” he scoffed as his arms dropped back to his sides. 

“I said, ‘get out’! If you’re going-- if you’re not going to listen and… if you don’t even trust me to stay with you after everything we’ve been through… just… get out.”

Although Cassian appeared staggered, his expression pinched with, what seemed to be, devastation, he still left. He stared at her a moment longer then turned his back to her and walked out of their room. Jyn watched the door close and waited at least two minutes for it to re-open and for Cassian to demand to be let back in but he did not return. Eventually their exchanged words filtered through her brain and she realized what she had done. A dagger of ice plunged through her heart, her blood ran cold, as she backed up to sit on their bed of the last year and dropped her face into her hands. 

After the war ended, the rebellion made a permanent headquarters on Coruscant and they were given a new room there, the council did not bother with two separate rooms since they knew that Andor and Erso would pick one of the two to bunk together in. Over the course of the year, they had continued to go on missions together -- sometimes alone or with another -- but Jyn had slowly been wondering what was the point. Most of what they did was sniffing out the loyalists that hid in basements and shady bars, sniveling about the ‘glory days’ but didn’t have enough guts to try to assemble again.

Without their weapon or their dark lord to maintain the power, instill terror, the empire was outnumbered and pathetic. 

With the knowledge that the war was over, Jyn had wondered what was left for them too. For so long she had believed her destiny was to die alone in a ditch. Then, after she joined the rebellion officially, she thought her death would be in the blaze of battle. Now, there was relative peace and she began thinking of new ways for her to live out the remainder of her days and she didn't want it to be fighting until she was old. Jyn had found a home in the rebellion but if she left tomorrow they would not care. It was in Cassian she found true belonging and she wanted to build on it. 

She wanted a family. 

Her parents had tried to create something, to give her love, give her a place to call home but the war took that away; shattered that love and stole away any happiness she could have had. Now that she had the beginning of something wonderful she wanted to follow through, live the life her parents wanted but hadn’t had the opportunity to finish. 

Did she not deserve that much; to live a life that she wanted, not what Saw or the rebellion told her she had to? Did Cassian not deserve the same opportunity after all he had given already in the course of a quarter century of his life; to finally have love and support not indifference and orders?

She lifted her head and sniffled as something dawned on her, she was supposed to be that for him; love and support. They were one another’s family now and the only thing he had ever been rigid about was the one argument she didn’t listen to. Jyn looked to the door, still closed, and bit her lip as she wondered if he would leave her now. 

That night he had not returned to their room and Jyn felt sick to her stomach. She went out and asked others if they had seen him but no one could point her in the right direction and in the end she went back to their room to wait. Jyn never fell asleep. 

When morning came, just as Jyn was prepared to go talk to the generals to see if they knew where Cassian had gone, the door opened and Cassian walked in. She snapped to attention and walked to the center of the room to meet him halfway but he only took a few steps, enough to be over the threshold. “I came for my stuff,” he muttered, not meeting her gaze. 

Her stomach lurched and she stared at him, disconcerted. “Cassian…”

“Please don’t make this any harder than it already is,” he pleaded and Jyn thought she might actually throw up. 

“No- are…” she stammered, as she watched him move about their room to gather his things, and stopped to catch her breath, she felt like she had just run up several flights of stairs. “We’re done?”

He stopped, his jacket in his hand and his other arm full of various other clothes. “Well, yeah,” he replied, though his voice lifted in the end and his expression was bewildered the shattered feeling in her chest had her brain scrambling for understanding, missing that he was asking not telling. 

Speechless, she stared at him blankly. He seemed to have paused for a moment but eventually resumed his task all while every part of her screamed to do something, say something. Jyn wanted to protest but she knew it was her fault. She had pushed him away. Everyone always left but this time it seemed it was her own doing. The all encompassing numbness kept her from feeling the tears on her cheeks, stole her voice, as she watched him walk passed her again towards the door.
    
    
    Don’t. 
    
    	Please, don’t…

The door opened and she finally pivoted on her heel to face him again just as he turned back around to look at her. 

“I don’t want to be,” he said, his voice as wrecked as she felt. “Jyn, I don’t want to be done. Please don’t-- I don’t want us to be over.”

Her lower lip quivered and she shook her head frantically, shaking a new wave of tears free from her eyes. He was blurry through her vision but she took a step towards him, led by her heart. “Me either,” she gasped before she was forced to exhale shakily. 

He dumped his things at the doorway and rushed towards her, three long strides from his long legs and they were reunited, their arms around one another.

O.o.O.o

They were tangled together in their bed, flush from shoulder to foot as his fingertips idly traced random patterns in her naked side. “I feel like an idiot.”

“We both are,” she replied and he chuckled before pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. 

“I’m sorry, Jyn…”

“Me too.”

Silence passed between them like an old friend, comfortable pleasant. After a few minutes, Cassian spoke up again, his words, though solemn, were still welcome and Jyn knew they needed to discuss what happened if they were going to move passed it. “The victory is still fragile. There’s already rumors of another uprising… last week there was an attack on one of the embassies… I can’t leave now, Jyn… I just… I wouldn’t be able to stand it if this all slipped through our fingers because I dropped my guard.” 

“I know,” she replied.

“If you can just hold on for a few more years, Jyn, I promise we can leave.”

She lifted her head off his shoulder to look at him with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. “What?”

“A few more years, Jyn, to make sure the empire is really gone and then I’ll leave. I’ll retire and then we can go wherever you want.”

“Wherever _we_ want, Cassian,” she responded and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I just want you to be okay. You’re my family, Cass, my home and I was afraid -- I _am_ afraid to lose you. I wish you didn’t feel like the galaxy’s problems were yours to fix… you’ve given so much already to the rebellion, to fighting the evil in the world.” She sighed. “But… I understand why you want to stay, so, I will too but, please, _promise_ me you’ll be careful.”

He nodded and she dropped her head against his shoulder again, inhaling deeply when she felt his lips brush against the top of her head.

"I've never thought about it before," he murmured, "what I would do if I left the rebellion. If I saw the end of the war… I wasn’t supposed to last this long."

"What did your parents do?" 

"They were teachers,” he said but he sounded far away. 

Jyn knew he was thinking about what his parents did ‘on the side’: rebel informants. When he had told her about the night stormtroopers broke into their house and, while he hid under the bed at the innocent age of five years old, slaughtered his parents he had been so gutted, so haunted. He had told her that there were many details that were fuzzy or missing but she knew it was a coping mechanism, a way his brain protected such a young mind from so much trauma. It wasn’t until months later, after he had lived in the streets as an urchin, the Alliance found him and took him in. Trained him to be a child soldier. 

The very idea made her blood boil, only because she could imagine her beloved so lost, a small child, essentially taken advantage of by rebels to support a cause he was still too young to understand. Sure they got him off the streets but what kind of life did they give him? He was too innocent and naive to understand the true meaning of vengeance until it was taught to him by an army. What he needed was love and support and instead a gun was thrust into his hand. What Saw had done with her was no better but she was angry on behalf of one she loved and she knew he felt similarly. 

After a quick squeeze around his waist, hugging him, Jyn shrugged and continued their conversation before either of them could spiral: "you could teach,” she suggested. “You're smart and have a lot of knowledge in things, like, slicing--" 

"Jyn," he laughed and brushed his eyebrow with the nail of his thumb, following the direction of his hair. "I'm not going to teach kids to hack into terminals." 

"No." She lightly slapped his bare chest with her hand. "Like, teach them how to _use_ a terminal, a tech class. Or… you know math and statistics," she explained, trying to think of ways his skills that made him such an invaluable spy could serve him outside a life of danger and rebellion.

Cassian thought silently and when she stole a glance at his expression she warmed at realizing he was mentioning considering it; his brow furrowed and lower lip pushed up against his upper lip. "And what would you do," he asked after a moment had passed in silence. 

"I suppose it depends on where we go," she muttered after thinking about the options. She was far less qualified for a life outside being a criminal or in the rebellion. That did not mean she wanted to stay forever though. Jyn lifted her head and looked at him. "Fest?" .

He shook his head. 

"Why not?" 

"It's a wasteland; no better than Hoth." 

"So?" 

Cassian raised his brows and looked at her firmly. "Pick somewhere else." 

"Pffft," she huffed and laid her head down on his chest again. "Where do you want to settle then?" 

"Dantooine?" 

"Lots of history there," she commented with a nod against him. 

"You've mentioned that before, the history of a place, maybe you should be a historian." 

Jyn hummed and shrugged. "We have time to figure it out. One way or another, Cass, we're going to get out of here, right?" 

"I promise."

O.o.O.o

Leia walked down the duracrete streets of Coruscant with Han at her right side. The streets, as always, were packed with pedestrians on either side and speeders going down the middle of the roadway at varying heights and speeds. It was a warm day, so she dressed in a white, sleeveless tunic dress with a sash around her waist and asked Han, who was also dressed more for the heat by ditching his general’s jacket at the base and wore his shirt with the sleeves rolled up, to join her.

To each side were stores and restaurants with their doors perpetually open with how many people filtered in and out so consistently. Han kept pointing out restaurants for them to go to for lunch but none of them sounded good and she kept shaking her head while looking around until finally, to their right, was a restaurant that served varieties of fish and rice. The vendor did not necessarily have a place for patrons to sit inside but there was a large window where they could walk up and place their order and sit in the street tables under the shade of the awning to eat. 

While they waited in line behind three other people, Leia looked around for the best place to sit. It seemed all the tables were taken in front of the restaurant so she looked across the street and found several empty tables. She started to elbow Han to get his attention when something caught her eye and she paused. 

Jyn and Cassian were across the street, eating lunch together and looking drastically different than she had ever seen them in her entire time of knowing either of them. 

She had known Cassian since he was eight years old and he had always been silent unless spoken to, the boy without a voice or a smile. Her father had told her that he had had a difficult couple of years, assured her that he would ‘come around’ but he never did. He grew up to be the best intelligence officer they had, he never came back from a mission with empty hands and that indicated a ruthlessness in the field that she could not quite wrap her mind around. Still, she was drawn to him, his air of mystery, but he kept her, like everyone, at a distance; like planets orbiting a sun, so near but never to touch, and there was nothing more young Leia had wanted than to bask in Cassian’s light. 

Then Jyn was brought into their life, like a shooting star; burning bright and trapped in a free fall. Leia had thought, when she was sent the encrypted message by her father about their plan, that Jyn would be gone in a day or two. Used in the plan Draven had set. Instead, it seemed, one mission with Cassian and Jyn got caught up in Cassian's gravitational pull as well. Never to break free. 

While Leia continued to stare at the couple, sitting adjacent to one another at a two person table - so relaxed and comfortable - she mused about how different they were outside the base. 

Just an hour ago, they had all been in a meeting with the other generals and council members and if one did not already know the two were in a relationship, you would never think they were. They did not touch nor talk to one another unless it was a matter they both had say in. Aside from a few subtle, secret glances to one another neither of them looked at the other unless prompted by conversation and when they walked down the hall, they kept a respectable distance between their shoulders. Although their relationship was disclosed to everyone who needed to know, they remained professional which was why, she supposed, they were still permitted to go on missions with one another. Ultimately it was easier to keep them paired together than to face the wrath of the other left behind. Of course, there was no denying they were effective in the field together, an unstoppable force.

Regardless, the two insisted on being partners and it was the reason neither of them seemed willing to take the promotion they both rightfully deserved, but if it were anyone else they would have been vetoed immediately. Relationships in the field were a liability but somehow it only made them stronger, better than any other team. It was not exactly standard process but when has the rebellion ever been consistent?

Here, outside of the Alliance base, they were different people. Jyn sat to Cassian’s right, her left leg fully extended and propped up on Cassian’s seat, in the space behind him while she held her bowl of noodles in her lap and listened to what Cassian was telling her with a smile on her face. Cassian’s bowl was on the table, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles in front of him, while he leaned forward, his chest pressed against the edge of the circular table, and tried to explain something while smiling broadly. His lips could barely touch despite trying to form words, his eyes narrowed with delight, and his right arm was waving around throughout the course of his story. 

Jyn threw her body against the backrest of her chair, her head tilting back so her hair fell away from her face as she laughed into the air. She couldn’t hear the laughter but the way Cassian looked at her like she was a goddess indicated that it was his favorite sound in the world. 

“Leia,” Han called her name, his tone sharp like he had had to repeat himself a few times. 

She turned around rapidly and looked towards where she last knew Han to be standing only to find he had moved up to the front of the line and was waiting for her along with the cook, who looked rather miffed and impatient. Leia quickly moved back up next to Han and looked between the two men with doe eyes. “Hm?”

“What do you want?”

“Oh, uh… whatever you’re getting,” she dismissed, her tone light as she looked back over to Jyn and Cassian. 

Now it was Jyn telling him something while he ate a couple mouthfuls of noodles. Cassian still looked at her as she talked but bent over his bowl as he shoveled them in and had to suck them up so the ends of the noodles sputtered around his lips until they disappeared and he could start chewing. After he had swallowed, Jyn paused and beckoned him closer with her finger while she bent her knee so she could lean in. Cassian mirrored her position and she lifted her hand to brush her thumb along the corner of his mouth with a grin on her lips. Just as Jyn was falling back, Cassian stopped her by touching his fingertips to her side, near her ribs, so he could close the distance between them and kissed her, sweet and chaste. 

“Leia,” Han’s voice interrupted again and she turned back to see he was holding her plate out to her to take and she brought her hands up to hold it underneath while he looked at the cook to grab the second one, his meal. They paid for it and stepped out of line to start looking for a place to sit but all the tables were still full. 

Then Han looked across the street and saw the couple and smiled. “Oh, hey, we could go sit with them,” he suggested and she shook her head. 

“No.” 

She would not be the one to take away one of the few, precious moments the two of them found themselves able to be free. To be happy. 

Han shrugged and they walked back the way they came, with Leia only wondering if it was safe for two stars to come so close; Jyn wasn’t orbiting Cassian, she had crashed right into him after years of gravitating closer and closer. Leia was no expert but when two stars collide they either become one -- something brighter than ever, larger than life -- or form a black hole. For now it seemed they were burning bright and Leia was just grateful she had been able to bask in the light they emanated for a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU!


End file.
